I'm also glad for this FCC ruling. After reading about the
citywide network in Rio Rancho, NM, which has rather hefty subscriber fees ($50/mo for 1 Mb/s), I wondered if authorities were seeking monopolization of WiFi.
This statement from the FAQs could indicate that: It's important to have
the involvement of city government in approving this type of deployment
Why? Maybe if the service were free and tax supported, not subscription based. All they really provide is WiMax routers on lamp poles and the 43 Mb/s backhaul. (You supply your own WiFi card/router.) The disruptive technology that Cringely extolled recently, regarding Linksys/Sveasoft DIY mesh networks, is much preferable.
What Rio Rancho gets out of the deal is subsidized bandwidth for emergency services, which taxes ought to cover. Now government officials have an interest in suppressing DIY mesh networks. And Rio Rancho is being held up as a model for other communities.
The FCC ruling is very much in the spirit of Open Source.
Let me say that again, since as one of the first posters I was modded to flamebait by an astroturfer. If Microsoft open-sourced DOS, it could actually help them. Threads of the code are still present in Windows.
This is a very telling comment. "Well, mind you, they still broke a law..." See how it is authoritarian to accept any old law on the books? See the fallacy, that laws exemplify some kind of wisdom?
Railguns are old news, especially the macro versions. Big deal that a monster gun can shoot large payloads long distances. We already knew that. Check outmy BIC pen, though. It can shoot a speck of dust through an enemy agent's heart without leaving a trace. I love my new PDA software that can automatically target an enemy agent through facial recognition. I just leave my devices running while I eat croissants on champs elysee and nobody messes with me.
Very well said, Carldot67. Thank you for the laser beam exposition of the issues. I read just today in a popular science article that 99% of Earth's micro-organisms have not been catalogued. You really get this idea, and I'm thankful for the resonance.
Finding a single useful organism could have tremendous impact. Consider the cost of a lottery ticket and the odds of payoff. A microarray would look like a lottery ticket in size and shape and ought to cost slightly less than a dollar to manufacture. QED.
It would be very interesting to learn how pharmaceutical companies conduct their own field research. "When you're on vacation, bring us back some dirt." I've read that some companies do exactly that.
I've tried to explain to friends this concept of natural pharmacopoeia by saying, "Imagine a world without cinnamon." Invariably, they say they don't really care for cinnamon. Sheesh.
Good to see your reply. Take it wherever it goes, openly and for good of all.
Your comment was the best summary of the technique, Carldot67. This is offtopic, but please see my previous slashdot post, because someone should do this.
Check out the June 1994 list. Ten years ago, supercomputers at about the 100th place on the list had gigaflop performance of today's desktops. Flashmob1, the University of San Francisco event in April that assembled a 180 gigaflop cluster in a single day, would have been at the number 1 spot. It's just cool to imagine the trend continuing, and it could, especially with wifi or wimax collective computing.
Stitching programs do the same thing
on
70 Megapixel Webcam
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Panoguide lists dozens of programs that will stitch still photos together to create a panorama. Instead of spending $7k on RoundShot, one could buy a really good digital camera and tripod, then take the shots manually. A 5 megapixel camera rotated ten degrees per shot would produce 180 megapixels of raw stills. And yes, you could do the same with a videocam--just export the footage as still files using any number of video programs, then stitch them together. The scanning method of RoundShot is slow--it might be able to produce a 360 degree perspective from the point of view of a moving observer, but the observer wouldn't travel far.
Three days ago I was modded down to Troll simply for posting this list of Miscrosoft's DRM subscribers. The topic was convergence, how devices are all going to work together, so it seemed important to point out that MS DRM is already widely adopted.
* Content companies America Online Inc., The Disney Co. and OD2
* Service providers CinemaNow Inc., Movielink LLC, MusicNow LLC, Napster LLC,
VirginMega France and Yacast
* Consumer electronic device manufacturers Archos SA, Creative, Dell Inc., Digital
5 Inc., iRiver International, PRISMIQ Inc., PURE Digital, Rio, Samsung Electronics
Company Ltd., SimpleDevices Inc. and 2Wire Inc.
* Chip makers BridgeCo AG, Equator Technologies Inc., Imagination Technologies,
Micronas, Motorola Inc., Sigma Designs Inc. and SigmaTel Inc. * HP
* Content companies America Online Inc., The Disney Co. and OD2
* Service providers CinemaNow Inc., Movielink LLC, MusicNow LLC, Napster LLC,
VirginMega France and Yacast
* Consumer electronic device manufacturers Archos SA, Creative, Dell Inc., Digital
5 Inc., iRiver International, PRISMIQ Inc., PURE Digital, Rio, Samsung Electronics
Company Ltd., SimpleDevices Inc. and 2Wire Inc.
* Chip makers BridgeCo AG, Equator Technologies Inc., Imagination Technologies,
Micronas, Motorola Inc., Sigma Designs Inc. and SigmaTel Inc. * HP
My bad experiences with college textbooks fall into two categories:
1. Overpriced and worthless 2. Overpriced
My first Fortran textbook, in 1975, read like a PhD dissertation and taught nothing about coding but cost a bundle. (I'm sure the author felt great pride that his book had been assigned.) The same trend has followed in almost every tech course I've taken, until recently--books seem to be getting better, more practical.
I've learned more from two weeks of Googling on some subjects than in entire college courses. Education has to change to accommodate new modes of learning, and open textbooks make sense. At least they introduce into the diploma-mill sensibility of college accreditation the egalitarian notion that ideas are what matter, not who wrote what.
Most pharmaceutical research relies on a combinatoric approach: create many variations of a substance then test each one in an array to see if it binds with known cellular structures, then test those that bind for useful properties. Nature produces complex substances that have scarcely been catalogued, but a "lab on a chip" microarray could make it possible for large scale screening by ordinary people, testing soil microbes in their backyards. (Microbes that might be indegenous to that backyard and nowhere else in the world.) The array would simply have to indicate a positive hit, not decipher the entire chemistry of the active agent--that would be done at pharmaceutical headquarters. Such a method would employ the distibution of workload that makes Open Source work, would be practical and inexpensive, and could even make money for microbe prospectors, if there were some mechanism for profit sharing on derivative medicinals.
IE for the Mac shows that MS is not totally inept with apps. If I could have my way, every sysadmin on the planet would understand how smart it is to switch to Mac. (They'd make themselves obsolete, that's why it wouldn't work--no more panic calls.) Security isn't just an issue of Macs not being targeted, though, it's an issue of Windows being highly targetable. By posting favorably about IE for Mac OS 9, I wanted to disrupt the religious OS zealotry and still end up with a pro-Mac message, because the irrationality of the idea-marketplace (with so many MS astroturfers) really hinders one's ability to say anything pro Mac. Takes diplomacy. I am glad that/. moderators saw it that way. It's important that OS zealotry doesn't obscure that we are still in an infancy of tech and that good ideas ought to be lauded wherever they come from. Microsoft is doing its best in its own monolithic cumbersome way, using strong-arm tactics and screwing the user, but our college buds who go to work for MS are still capable of writing good code. IE for Mac hasn't been updated in years, but it's a nice app. Can't take that away from them.
IE never gives me problems because I'm using it on a Mac (OS9). In 10 years I've never been touched by an exploit, worm or virus. Windows users will be patching and updating through the next 3 generations of hardware, as they have been since 486 days. Please, this isn't flamebait. I prefer IE over Opera, Mozilla (Netscape), and everything else. (Although Wannabe is a great text-only browser--lean and fast.) The problem is definitely in the OS. And to the usual astroturf reply, "just wait til exploit writers target Macs," it's not going to happen for the lifetime of the Mac I'm on, during which I will have peace of mind. How many more exploits will we read about on Slashdot in that timeframe? Guesses?
With so much money being spent on law enforcement, prison accommodations, all of that, would it cost less just to pay spammers to quit? Not to incentivize spamming, but to take the big players out of the game very rapidly. Doubtful it would work in the long run, but it's a thought.
The sites mentioned, as well as Spymac ( first with 1 GB email), exist as proofs of concept with a presumption of falsifiability. There was no way to know beforehand if they'd be viable, no way to test if they'd fail without putting them on the road. This is in contrast to the dotcom burnrate days, when every concept was presumed roadworthy from the moment of conception on a cocktail napkin. Beta is a good thing, it's a sign of maturity (ironically enough).
The trouble with info in databases is its persistence. You might forget an indiscretion of youth, but big iron never will. Anyone who's ever appeared in court and has been charged with a maximum allowable offense, later reduced to a much more minor offense, ought to verify that the lesser charge is on record. Bad records can ruin chances at employment. Many travelers to Canada find themselves blocked from entry, stranded at the border, because they didn't know their records were in error.
Right. Pixar's Renderman was based on BMRT (Blue Moon Rendering Tools) that was free for noncommercial use until recently. Both were developed by the same author.
I'm dismayed that any reference to Mac security usually gets smacked down in comments here, whenever the subject of Windows insecurity comes up. "Just wait til the worm and virus writers target Macs."
But here's an idea. Buy a used Older Mac for under $50 to download your Windows patches, then burn them to CD and transfer them to your PC. Doesn't hurt to have a backup plan.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm also glad for this FCC ruling. After reading about the citywide network in Rio Rancho, NM, which has rather hefty subscriber fees ($50/mo for 1 Mb/s), I wondered if authorities were seeking monopolization of WiFi.
This statement from the FAQs could indicate that: It's important to have the involvement of city government in approving this type of deployment
Why? Maybe if the service were free and tax supported, not subscription based. All they really provide is WiMax routers on lamp poles and the 43 Mb/s backhaul. (You supply your own WiFi card/router.) The disruptive technology that Cringely extolled recently, regarding Linksys/Sveasoft DIY mesh networks, is much preferable.
What Rio Rancho gets out of the deal is subsidized bandwidth for emergency services, which taxes ought to cover. Now government officials have an interest in suppressing DIY mesh networks. And Rio Rancho is being held up as a model for other communities.
The FCC ruling is very much in the spirit of Open Source.
Let me say that again, since as one of the first posters I was modded to flamebait by an astroturfer. If Microsoft open-sourced DOS, it could actually help them. Threads of the code are still present in Windows.
Sure, but since DOS is still present in Windows, that might actually do Microsoft some good.
This is a very telling comment. "Well, mind you, they still broke a law..." See how it is authoritarian to accept any old law on the books? See the fallacy, that laws exemplify some kind of wisdom?
Railguns are old news, especially the macro versions. Big deal that a monster gun can shoot large payloads long distances. We already knew that. Check outmy BIC pen, though. It can shoot a speck of dust through an enemy agent's heart without leaving a trace. I love my new PDA software that can automatically target an enemy agent through facial recognition. I just leave my devices running while I eat croissants on champs elysee and nobody messes with me.
Very well said, Carldot67. Thank you for the laser beam exposition of the issues. I read just today in a popular science article that 99% of Earth's micro-organisms have not been catalogued. You really get this idea, and I'm thankful for the resonance.
Finding a single useful organism could have tremendous impact. Consider the cost of a lottery ticket and the odds of payoff. A microarray would look like a lottery ticket in size and shape and ought to cost slightly less than a dollar to manufacture. QED.
It would be very interesting to learn how pharmaceutical companies conduct their own field research. "When you're on vacation, bring us back some dirt." I've read that some companies do exactly that.
I've tried to explain to friends this concept of natural pharmacopoeia by saying, "Imagine a world without cinnamon." Invariably, they say they don't really care for cinnamon. Sheesh.
Good to see your reply. Take it wherever it goes, openly and for good of all.
I've been researching chipsets for digital TV. Here are my links to current hardware products:
STMicroelectronics System on Chip (2) Get Linux here
ATI Xilleon 220 (Products)
Sigma Designs Digital Media Processors (Products)
IBM PowerPC405 STBxx (Zarlink [2], Araneo)
Texas Instruments DM642 DSP (i3 Mood Box , X-Designs Flikit + Softier MediaLinux)
NEC EMMArchitecture2 (Galaxis + LinuxTV , PRISMIQ + Linux)
Equator Technologies BSP-15 boards
Via CN400 (Mini-ITX Board), PM800 and PM880 (w/ HDTV for Pentium 4) , ShowShifter HMN, Soyo Multimedia Ready Motherboard (with TV Tuner, $129.99)
Toshiba TX System RISC (MontaVista Linux)
Windows chipsets:
Intel 815 VisionPlus terrestrial box (Korean OEM)
AMD Geode (CoCom)
ARM (Samsung, etc.)
Digeo X-Stream (Paul Allen company)
Your comment was the best summary of the technique, Carldot67. This is offtopic, but please see my previous slashdot post, because someone should do this.
Check out the June 1994 list. Ten years ago, supercomputers at about the 100th place on the list had gigaflop performance of today's desktops. Flashmob1, the University of San Francisco event in April that assembled a 180 gigaflop cluster in a single day, would have been at the number 1 spot. It's just cool to imagine the trend continuing, and it could, especially with wifi or wimax collective computing.
Panoguide lists dozens of programs that will stitch still photos together to create a panorama. Instead of spending $7k on RoundShot, one could buy a really good digital camera and tripod, then take the shots manually. A 5 megapixel camera rotated ten degrees per shot would produce 180 megapixels of raw stills. And yes, you could do the same with a videocam--just export the footage as still files using any number of video programs, then stitch them together. The scanning method of RoundShot is slow--it might be able to produce a 360 degree perspective from the point of view of a moving observer, but the observer wouldn't travel far.
Three days ago I was modded down to Troll simply for posting this list of Miscrosoft's DRM subscribers. The topic was convergence, how devices are all going to work together, so it seemed important to point out that MS DRM is already widely adopted.
.
Supporters of Microsoft DRM
* Content companies America Online Inc., The Disney Co. and OD2
* Service providers CinemaNow Inc., Movielink LLC, MusicNow LLC, Napster LLC, VirginMega France and Yacast
* Consumer electronic device manufacturers Archos SA, Creative, Dell Inc., Digital 5 Inc., iRiver International, PRISMIQ Inc., PURE Digital, Rio, Samsung Electronics Company Ltd., SimpleDevices Inc. and 2Wire Inc.
* Chip makers BridgeCo AG, Equator Technologies Inc., Imagination Technologies, Micronas, Motorola Inc., Sigma Designs Inc. and SigmaTel Inc.
* HP
Modded down to Troll? Why? Simply for pointing out a list of companies that have signed on to MS DRM? Looks like astroturf censorship.
* Content companies America Online Inc., The Disney Co. and OD2
* Service providers CinemaNow Inc., Movielink LLC, MusicNow LLC, Napster LLC, VirginMega France and Yacast
* Consumer electronic device manufacturers Archos SA, Creative, Dell Inc., Digital 5 Inc., iRiver International, PRISMIQ Inc., PURE Digital, Rio, Samsung Electronics Company Ltd., SimpleDevices Inc. and 2Wire Inc.
* Chip makers BridgeCo AG, Equator Technologies Inc., Imagination Technologies, Micronas, Motorola Inc., Sigma Designs Inc. and SigmaTel Inc.
* HP
My bad experiences with college textbooks fall into two categories:
1. Overpriced and worthless
2. Overpriced
My first Fortran textbook, in 1975, read like a PhD dissertation and taught nothing about coding but cost a bundle. (I'm sure the author felt great pride that his book had been assigned.) The same trend has followed in almost every tech course I've taken, until recently--books seem to be getting better, more practical.
I've learned more from two weeks of Googling on some subjects than in entire college courses. Education has to change to accommodate new modes of learning, and open textbooks make sense. At least they introduce into the diploma-mill sensibility of college accreditation the egalitarian notion that ideas are what matter, not who wrote what.
Most pharmaceutical research relies on a combinatoric approach: create many variations of a substance then test each one in an array to see if it binds with known cellular structures, then test those that bind for useful properties. Nature produces complex substances that have scarcely been catalogued, but a "lab on a chip" microarray could make it possible for large scale screening by ordinary people, testing soil microbes in their backyards. (Microbes that might be indegenous to that backyard and nowhere else in the world.) The array would simply have to indicate a positive hit, not decipher the entire chemistry of the active agent--that would be done at pharmaceutical headquarters. Such a method would employ the distibution of workload that makes Open Source work, would be practical and inexpensive, and could even make money for microbe prospectors, if there were some mechanism for profit sharing on derivative medicinals.
IE for the Mac shows that MS is not totally inept with apps. If I could have my way, every sysadmin on the planet would understand how smart it is to switch to Mac. (They'd make themselves obsolete, that's why it wouldn't work--no more panic calls.) Security isn't just an issue of Macs not being targeted, though, it's an issue of Windows being highly targetable. By posting favorably about IE for Mac OS 9, I wanted to disrupt the religious OS zealotry and still end up with a pro-Mac message, because the irrationality of the idea-marketplace (with so many MS astroturfers) really hinders one's ability to say anything pro Mac. Takes diplomacy. I am glad that /. moderators saw it that way. It's important that OS zealotry doesn't obscure that we are still in an infancy of tech and that good ideas ought to be lauded wherever they come from. Microsoft is doing its best in its own monolithic cumbersome way, using strong-arm tactics and screwing the user, but our college buds who go to work for MS are still capable of writing good code. IE for Mac hasn't been updated in years, but it's a nice app. Can't take that away from them.
IE never gives me problems because I'm using it on a Mac (OS9). In 10 years I've never been touched by an exploit, worm or virus. Windows users will be patching and updating through the next 3 generations of hardware, as they have been since 486 days. Please, this isn't flamebait. I prefer IE over Opera, Mozilla (Netscape), and everything else. (Although Wannabe is a great text-only browser--lean and fast.) The problem is definitely in the OS. And to the usual astroturf reply, "just wait til exploit writers target Macs," it's not going to happen for the lifetime of the Mac I'm on, during which I will have peace of mind. How many more exploits will we read about on Slashdot in that timeframe? Guesses?
Some new wireless routers shown at Computex Taipei:
Gen-WAN
OvisLink
Well Communication
Xavi
Minitar
WebPro
SENAO
Amigo
With so much money being spent on law enforcement, prison accommodations, all of that, would it cost less just to pay spammers to quit? Not to incentivize spamming, but to take the big players out of the game very rapidly. Doubtful it would work in the long run, but it's a thought.
The sites mentioned, as well as Spymac ( first with 1 GB email), exist as proofs of concept with a presumption of falsifiability. There was no way to know beforehand if they'd be viable, no way to test if they'd fail without putting them on the road. This is in contrast to the dotcom burnrate days, when every concept was presumed roadworthy from the moment of conception on a cocktail napkin. Beta is a good thing, it's a sign of maturity (ironically enough).
The trouble with info in databases is its persistence. You might forget an indiscretion of youth, but big iron never will. Anyone who's ever appeared in court and has been charged with a maximum allowable offense, later reduced to a much more minor offense, ought to verify that the lesser charge is on record. Bad records can ruin chances at employment. Many travelers to Canada find themselves blocked from entry, stranded at the border, because they didn't know their records were in error.
Right. Pixar's Renderman was based on BMRT (Blue Moon Rendering Tools) that was free for noncommercial use until recently. Both were developed by the same author.
Calling attention to nonsense coming from MS is a huge public service. Thanks.
I have a friend who bought a 386 laptop on ebay for exactly your purposes. Cost about $25 and worked out wonderfully for her.
I'm dismayed that any reference to Mac security usually gets smacked down in comments here, whenever the subject of Windows insecurity comes up. "Just wait til the worm and virus writers target Macs."
But here's an idea. Buy a used Older Mac for under $50 to download your Windows patches, then burn them to CD and transfer them to your PC. Doesn't hurt to have a backup plan.