Considering you can get a Pocket PC for $100 more, which additionally gives you SD, WiFi, Bluetooth, color touchscreen, microphone, speaker, hardware controls, more RAM, more flash capacity, a faster CPU and an integrated "UPS" that runs for several hours, I don't see these selling too well. There are few applications for the hardware that could not benefit immensely from an integrated display alone. Granted most Pocket PCs do not come with integrated ethernet, but it can be easily added via CF.
Dan East
A bit risky
on
USB Batteries
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Unless the electronics are really well engineered (aka foolproof design) then a failure could result in a damaged motherboard, especially considering the amount of current these things are capable of drawing. Surface mount fuses aren't much fun to replace, especially in laptops. I'd wait a while to see if any horror stories surface before plugging that thing into my machines.
On a related note, the Motorola Razr cell phone's power connector is mini-USB, so it can charge off of your USB port as well.
I think what's most interesting about this is hybrid vessels, that use both sail and solar power. Obviously the big limitation with sailboats is a lack of wind, which often occurs in fair-weather scenarios (high pressure system, thus clear skies). Solar propulsion would often complement wind power when needed most. It would also be useful for the other times when sail power is not used, such as navigating in and out of the docks.
In January 2004 there were more than 4,285,000 CCTV cameras in the UK
Every time I hear statistics along those lines I wonder why a population would allow such a thing. General apathy? The good (attempting to prevent crime) really outweighs the bad (loss of privacy, abuse of power by government)?
This would make sense if they were checking battery serial numbers to see if they were part of the defective batches. However to ban them wholesale is ridiculous. This sounds more like one CEO wants to smear mud in the face of another CEO (or worse, they have an interest in a competitive product or manufacturer).
However, the restrictions have been applied narrowly, and effectively prevent only low-tech exports such as handcuffs, helmets, fingerprint powder, and tear gas
I'm sure that really makes a big difference. You know, since China is such a small country with few resources, there's just no way they could manufacture stuff like that domestically. Yeah, I know, it's the principle of it all (or, in other words, a bill a politician could sponsor to make them appear moral).
Unfortunately far too many laws are created so politicians can simply be seen doing something. Sort of like in our town, where a lady was killed in a car accident a few years ago (because her cat was loose in her car and she was messing around with it and pulled out in front of a truck), so the town quickly changed the intersection to a 4-way stop. Now hundreds of drivers are inconvenienced daily just because the local government wanted to do something the newspaper could write about.
My neighbor works for Atmos energy, and lays gas lines for a living. Quite a bit of line put down these days is some sort of PVC, especially leading from the main lines to the houses. So the claim that it would bring connectivity right up to the meter at the house would only apply to old gas installations (15+ years old).
As with anything that keeps stats or running totals, there are those that seek to achieve the highest count possible. Wikipedia is not immune to this. There are those that will make 50 small, distinct edits to an article (each comprising minor changes, like punctuation, formatting, spelling corrections, etc) to increase their edit count.
It is my personal experience that those with the highest edit counts peruse any and all articles applying Style Guidelines. This results in changes like like correcting capitalization of headers ("External Links" -> "External links"), placing bullets in front of external links, formatting dates, wikifying appropriate words, updating links that redirect, etc. Once a person becomes familiar with the guidelines they can easily nitpick pretty much any article and find something to correct (or at least change to their personal preference).
Also, don't forget those that run bots. That's a very easy method to rack up edit points.
Lowest common denominator, that's the quality of results they'll end up with. I might see a picture and label it "bird", where my partner, being an ornithologist, labels its exact scientific and common names. Until he enters "bird" we don't get a match.
I'm curious what the ratio of signed in / anonymous article views is. Obviously the number of anonymous views must be many times larger for them to feel this will help.
I see a few issues with this.
Since user contributions (for protected articles) will have to be specifically flagged as valid, there will be a delay before the contribution is seen by all. For obscure articles this delay could be measured in days. It also lessens one of the strengths of Wikipedia over other encyclopedias, which is immediacy, especially concerning breaking news events (most recent that comes to mind is the John Mark Karr article).
More reversion of vandalism will fall on signed in users, since anonymous users cannot see the vandalism and thus cannot revert it themselves. I know that currently signed in users take care of most vandalism, however I see plenty of reversions by anonymous users too.
Since regular contributors will know that vandalism cannot be seen by the general public, it may lead to apathy, leaving the vandalism in the article for longer. I usually visit Wikipedia in one of two modes - to contribute because I have spare time, or to find information while I'm working on something else. In the latter case I would be less likely to revert vandalism if I knew that the general public could not see it, so as to not distract me from whatever it is I'm actually working on.
Blatant vandalism is merely annoying. Subtle modification of article facts is what is really dangerous (like changing a birthdate by a few days, etc). This new addition really only addresses the former, because most wikipedians will use the same criteria they currently use when deciding if a contribution should be reverted - that being if the contribution has the mere appearance of being legitimate.
Finally, this may require more effort. Currently Wikipedia works by checking specific contributions to see if they are vandalism. It is simply assumed that the article, in whatever state it was in already, was fine. This is particularly true for those patrolling Recent Changes. The new addition will put more burden on people to look over the entire article to spot errors (or at least multiple contributions since it was last approved), since there will be less patrolling of individual contributions.
According to the article, the missing footage has not been found: "It is hoped documentation associated with Mr Clifton's reel will help direct researchers to the warehouse or museum where the missing tapes are stored - if they still exist."
They are going to use his copy to follow a paperwork trail, hopefully ending at the missing tapes.
Your both wrong. Encrypting twice at 64 bit is like 64*64=4096 bit encryption. Personally, I like to encrypt 7 times at 2 bit encryption for 128 bit strength. If its something I really want to keep secret, I encrypt four times at 128 bit for 268435456 bit encryption. However, don't make the mistake I made once of encrypting 128 times at 1 bit. Because that is just 1^128, which yields nothing more than 1 bit encryption.
In case anyone is wondering, I'm hoping some DRM coder will gain valuable insight from this post.
"Spreading water, an inexpensive and common chemical, on to a flat surface, Dan East, a Slashdot reader with Excellent Karma, observed the spontaneous creation of individual droplets as the molecules self-organized themselves to form larger complex structures."
I can't believe it. You post a message about a CPU on Slashdot that has an instruction called SEX and didn't try to make a joke out of it? You've really let us all down.
using the SEX instruction, you can select any of the 16-bit registers to be the index register.
Kinkiest CPU I've never coded for.
There, that's my feeble attempt to make up for your post's deficiency.
This innovation will make it easier to spot blurry images
That's assuming you don't suffer from hyperopia.
What I'm looking forward to is a few years from now, when my 15.4" laptop screen will have the same DPI as this new panel. Of course it will take a couple gigs of dedicated VRAM, but the SVG based www of the future sure will look crisp on it!
After looking at some of the results from the Firefox sources, I see that "bugs" include unreferenced variables and dead code that never gets executed.
It looks like most of the real bugs consist of not checking return values, the worst being routines that act upon an object allocated by another routine without checking for null pointer.
Am I the only one surprised that Kirk still wields such power? I could understand back in the early 90's, but I figured his influence would have wained by now.
I'm sorry, but anytime I see some new invention (bet it instrumentation, drugs, etc) related to healthcare, and they talk about how cheap it will be, I can't help but thing "yeah, right". Maybe it's cheap to produce, but by the time this patent is grabbed up by a money grubbing corporation, then endures the expensive and drawn out FDA approval process, and finally the owner determines the maximum that Medicaid and other insurers are willing to pay for the test, it will hardly be cheap. By cheap they really mean "greater profit margin than with existing technologies".
Slashdot Mirror
Considering you can get a Pocket PC for $100 more, which additionally gives you SD, WiFi, Bluetooth, color touchscreen, microphone, speaker, hardware controls, more RAM, more flash capacity, a faster CPU and an integrated "UPS" that runs for several hours, I don't see these selling too well. There are few applications for the hardware that could not benefit immensely from an integrated display alone. Granted most Pocket PCs do not come with integrated ethernet, but it can be easily added via CF.
Dan East
Unless the electronics are really well engineered (aka foolproof design) then a failure could result in a damaged motherboard, especially considering the amount of current these things are capable of drawing. Surface mount fuses aren't much fun to replace, especially in laptops. I'd wait a while to see if any horror stories surface before plugging that thing into my machines.
On a related note, the Motorola Razr cell phone's power connector is mini-USB, so it can charge off of your USB port as well.
Dan East
)
There. Your post was missing a closing parenthesis, and Slashdot is already unbalanced enough.
Dan East
I think what's most interesting about this is hybrid vessels, that use both sail and solar power. Obviously the big limitation with sailboats is a lack of wind, which often occurs in fair-weather scenarios (high pressure system, thus clear skies). Solar propulsion would often complement wind power when needed most. It would also be useful for the other times when sail power is not used, such as navigating in and out of the docks.
Dan East
without using a drop of gasoline
And if you really want to be picky, ships don't burn gasoline. They use diesel fuel.
Dan East
In January 2004 there were more than 4,285,000 CCTV cameras in the UK
Every time I hear statistics along those lines I wonder why a population would allow such a thing. General apathy? The good (attempting to prevent crime) really outweighs the bad (loss of privacy, abuse of power by government)?
Dan East
This would make sense if they were checking battery serial numbers to see if they were part of the defective batches. However to ban them wholesale is ridiculous. This sounds more like one CEO wants to smear mud in the face of another CEO (or worse, they have an interest in a competitive product or manufacturer).
Dan East
However, the restrictions have been applied narrowly, and effectively prevent only low-tech exports such as handcuffs, helmets, fingerprint powder, and tear gas
I'm sure that really makes a big difference. You know, since China is such a small country with few resources, there's just no way they could manufacture stuff like that domestically. Yeah, I know, it's the principle of it all (or, in other words, a bill a politician could sponsor to make them appear moral).
Unfortunately far too many laws are created so politicians can simply be seen doing something. Sort of like in our town, where a lady was killed in a car accident a few years ago (because her cat was loose in her car and she was messing around with it and pulled out in front of a truck), so the town quickly changed the intersection to a 4-way stop. Now hundreds of drivers are inconvenienced daily just because the local government wanted to do something the newspaper could write about.
Dan East
My neighbor works for Atmos energy, and lays gas lines for a living. Quite a bit of line put down these days is some sort of PVC, especially leading from the main lines to the houses. So the claim that it would bring connectivity right up to the meter at the house would only apply to old gas installations (15+ years old).
Dan
Who needs flux for SMT? Just use a toaster oven.
Dan East
As with anything that keeps stats or running totals, there are those that seek to achieve the highest count possible. Wikipedia is not immune to this. There are those that will make 50 small, distinct edits to an article (each comprising minor changes, like punctuation, formatting, spelling corrections, etc) to increase their edit count.
It is my personal experience that those with the highest edit counts peruse any and all articles applying Style Guidelines. This results in changes like like correcting capitalization of headers ("External Links" -> "External links"), placing bullets in front of external links, formatting dates, wikifying appropriate words, updating links that redirect, etc. Once a person becomes familiar with the guidelines they can easily nitpick pretty much any article and find something to correct (or at least change to their personal preference).
Also, don't forget those that run bots. That's a very easy method to rack up edit points.
Dan East
Lowest common denominator, that's the quality of results they'll end up with. I might see a picture and label it "bird", where my partner, being an ornithologist, labels its exact scientific and common names. Until he enters "bird" we don't get a match.
Dan East
I'm curious what the ratio of signed in / anonymous article views is. Obviously the number of anonymous views must be many times larger for them to feel this will help.
I see a few issues with this.
Since user contributions (for protected articles) will have to be specifically flagged as valid, there will be a delay before the contribution is seen by all. For obscure articles this delay could be measured in days. It also lessens one of the strengths of Wikipedia over other encyclopedias, which is immediacy, especially concerning breaking news events (most recent that comes to mind is the John Mark Karr article).
More reversion of vandalism will fall on signed in users, since anonymous users cannot see the vandalism and thus cannot revert it themselves. I know that currently signed in users take care of most vandalism, however I see plenty of reversions by anonymous users too.
Since regular contributors will know that vandalism cannot be seen by the general public, it may lead to apathy, leaving the vandalism in the article for longer. I usually visit Wikipedia in one of two modes - to contribute because I have spare time, or to find information while I'm working on something else. In the latter case I would be less likely to revert vandalism if I knew that the general public could not see it, so as to not distract me from whatever it is I'm actually working on.
Blatant vandalism is merely annoying. Subtle modification of article facts is what is really dangerous (like changing a birthdate by a few days, etc). This new addition really only addresses the former, because most wikipedians will use the same criteria they currently use when deciding if a contribution should be reverted - that being if the contribution has the mere appearance of being legitimate.
Finally, this may require more effort. Currently Wikipedia works by checking specific contributions to see if they are vandalism. It is simply assumed that the article, in whatever state it was in already, was fine. This is particularly true for those patrolling Recent Changes. The new addition will put more burden on people to look over the entire article to spot errors (or at least multiple contributions since it was last approved), since there will be less patrolling of individual contributions.
Dan East
Here's a new version of the summary which I think is easier to read...
I really hope you were trying to be funny.
Dan East
According to the article, the missing footage has not been found:
"It is hoped documentation associated with Mr Clifton's reel will help direct researchers to the warehouse or museum where the missing tapes are stored - if they still exist."
They are going to use his copy to follow a paperwork trail, hopefully ending at the missing tapes.
Dan East
Your both wrong. Encrypting twice at 64 bit is like 64*64=4096 bit encryption. Personally, I like to encrypt 7 times at 2 bit encryption for 128 bit strength. If its something I really want to keep secret, I encrypt four times at 128 bit for 268435456 bit encryption. However, don't make the mistake I made once of encrypting 128 times at 1 bit. Because that is just 1^128, which yields nothing more than 1 bit encryption.
In case anyone is wondering, I'm hoping some DRM coder will gain valuable insight from this post.
Dan East
You make things way too complicated. Just butter both sides of the bread.
Dan East
"Spreading water, an inexpensive and common chemical, on to a flat surface, Dan East, a Slashdot reader with Excellent Karma, observed the spontaneous creation of individual droplets as the molecules self-organized themselves to form larger complex structures."
Dan East
I can't believe it. You post a message about a CPU on Slashdot that has an instruction called SEX and didn't try to make a joke out of it? You've really let us all down.
using the SEX instruction, you can select any of the 16-bit registers to be the index register.
Kinkiest CPU I've never coded for.
There, that's my feeble attempt to make up for your post's deficiency.
Dan East
This innovation will make it easier to spot blurry images
That's assuming you don't suffer from hyperopia.
What I'm looking forward to is a few years from now, when my 15.4" laptop screen will have the same DPI as this new panel. Of course it will take a couple gigs of dedicated VRAM, but the SVG based www of the future sure will look crisp on it!
Dan East
After looking at some of the results from the Firefox sources, I see that "bugs" include unreferenced variables and dead code that never gets executed.
It looks like most of the real bugs consist of not checking return values, the worst being routines that act upon an object allocated by another routine without checking for null pointer.
Dan East
You entered the wrong url in your browser. Instead of slashdot.org try videohelp.com.
Dan East
If we start hearing the Wilhelm scream then we'll know they've stooped to an all-time low!
Dan East
Am I the only one surprised that Kirk still wields such power? I could understand back in the early 90's, but I figured his influence would have wained by now.
Dan East
I'm sorry, but anytime I see some new invention (bet it instrumentation, drugs, etc) related to healthcare, and they talk about how cheap it will be, I can't help but thing "yeah, right". Maybe it's cheap to produce, but by the time this patent is grabbed up by a money grubbing corporation, then endures the expensive and drawn out FDA approval process, and finally the owner determines the maximum that Medicaid and other insurers are willing to pay for the test, it will hardly be cheap. By cheap they really mean "greater profit margin than with existing technologies".
Dan East