Morse has more than two symbols
on
DNA Goes Binary
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Morse uses a logic on-off combined with time to generate more than two symbols. The symbols are:
Dot (short on)
Dash (on for length of three dots) Character-internal Space (off for length of dot) Inter-character space (off for length of dash) Long space (length of several dashes, I think)
There is also something called swing that is a function of time parameter changes in hand keying and can itself convey contextual information like emotion.
Well, compared to bluetooth we are talking about very little power vs. less power, if UWB performs as advertised. I'm not sure it is going to matter compared to what the support devices use.
But I have a lot of doubt that UWB will perform as advertised. Sitting in the middle of few million switching transistors or so (your typical computer), it is going to run into trouble.
I thought about what you said a bit more. Am I trolling? No, I sincerely believe that these technologies are going to be losers for the applications for which they are promised. If I had a friend who was invested in either one, I'd tell that friend to cash out quickly. I also feel that the promises being made to investors in the name of both of these technologies border on fraud. Remember that when we talk to investors, we're not supposed to be talking about what is possible, but what is going to be practical. You can lose a lot of money on the merely possible.
Well, that sounds interesting. Is it really less expensive than just laying another cable in the trench? I thought the major cost was trenching, pole plant, etc.
Well, I use X-10 in my home, but I don't use it for my networking backbone. And if it's not just plug-and-play, we're not talking consumer equipment, are we? For all I know, you could work for a power company and could be talking about 200 kHz signalling. Tell me what particular powerline networking you are using.
No, I am familiar with UWB. I am just not drinking the UWB kool-aid. The price of UWB vs. more conventional spread-spectrum wireless equipment is dependent on how much of the communications system you can pack into a single, inexpensive integrated circuit. At some point both systems converge on a sub-$1 component. We're very close to that point for bluetooth, and we don't have similar UWB components ready for use in consumer devices.
Power utilization improvement vs. bluetooth isn't very convincing.
Regarding 802.11a, when you arrive at the right trade off of power vs. bandwidth vs. processing gain vs. range, I'm not convinced that you will be able to demonstrate tremendously better power utilization in practice vs. a spread-spectrum system with similar characteristics.
Vonage works reasonably well for me, but I can't count on all of the routers between my home and them observing quality-of-service indications in the IP packet. This expecially since I don't pay my internet provider for any voice-grade quality-of-service. VOIP will work well when it is a direct service of your internet provider and they have an incentive to make the transport work correctly.
It happens, however, that most of the problems that come up are on the first hop between my site and my internet provider's, and I can control them. I can't guarantee that this will always be the case.
Except that some of these "disruptive" technologies are already dead.
Powerline networking. It's sort of like one of those bad movie monsters that you just can't kill. Every few years, another sequel. It has tremendous promise if you can just work out those little technical problems. But you can't. Too much noise, and they radiate, and have all sorts of reactances along the way to mess up your signal with attenuation and reflections. The best proposal for powerline networking I've seen has been to use long-distance power lines to duct microwave transmissions. But that's not broadband to the home, it's a cheap backbone with medium speed, and imagine how much better it would work if they just put a fiber along the same right-of-way.
Ultra wideband for low power, local devices is going to lose because the other transports for those devices, like bluetooth and 802.11, won't be more expensive and have fewer problems. Maybe UWB will have a few uses, but it's not going to be a big deal.
Are you trying to be a troll? If this is a serious question, go look at fsf.org . It should suffice to say that there would probably be no Mandrake distribution without their work.
The potential to fake a photograph has existed since the earliest days of photography. The veracity of the photograph or other scientific evidence rests on the oath taken by the photographer and other technicians involved. They are not asking for DRM, but for a digital signature generated by the camera and attesting to the time and other circumstances of the photograph. Auditing the image-processing is possible, given certified software and a circumscribed list of permitted operations. Some form of "trusted computing" could be used to avoid trivial circumventions of the list of allowed operations.
Note that this is "trusted computing" in service of the owner of the computer (in this case the police department and department of justice rather than the individual operator). The fundamental difference is that the owner of the computer is the one asking for the trusted service, rather than some other entity that does not trust the owner of the computer.
Well, the Zaurus uses only one of the 4 serial channels of the SD card. Is that what an MMC card does? I need only use the card for storage, not for its feature of protecting someone else from the user.
I haven't bothered to load the X packages yet, but OpenZaurus includes an X server. It would be nice if the switch from native Opie to X Opie could be achieved by changing a shared library, rather than by rebuilding applications.
By the way, OpenZaurus 3.0, the "free" load for the Zaurus, is really cool! I am running it on my Zaurus, with 1/2 Gig SD card and either 802.11b or Bluetooth in the CF slot. When I ssh to it there's little to tell me it's not a powerful server system. And the applications that run on the LCD are pretty good, too. I hear there's a reverse-engineered driver for the SD coming from the iPaq. That's the last component that wasn't Open Source. I will demo all of this on the geek cruise this year, and will also do a talk on international wireless connectivity with GPRS.
Well, Lineo did a lot of work on the Zaurus, especially drivers, but the software mostly comes from the community, with the runner up being Troll Tech. Saying that embeddix "powers" the Zaurus is market-speak.
I would have hoped for some insight into the way he thinks and feels rather than a series of flip answers.
I sometimes enjoy Star Trek and other TV science fiction, although I don't get time to watch much of it. I've learned not to be very interested in actor appearances, because they aren't the fascinating characters they portray, they're just actors. I think I'd have more fun talking with the writers.
Oh, I definitely think Open Source is the best, if that's what you mean by bias. What you need is an unbiased third party to evaluate both sides. Like Terry Bollinger at MITRE. His conclusion is really interesting reading.
Especially these guys. They are lobbying against your right to choose Open Source. They dress their campaign up as if they seek equality and no preferences, but read the fine print. They want to lock us out of industry standards by using patents - it's right there in their "principles".
See SincereChoice.org for a platform that really would give you choice.
Don't buy their line. The U.S. government has not proposed to require Open Source, only to promote it so that it will be used effectively. If Software Choice was really fighting for equality, it would be nice. But when you read the fine print, you'll find that they aren't. They stand for patents in standards, which would lock out Open Source. They want software purchasers to blind themselves to the merits of intellectual property policy. Consider two functionaly equivalent programs - one Open Source and one proprietary - to be the same. The Open Source program has a lot of economic and business advantages over the proprietary one, and the purchaser should prefer Open Source if all else is equivalent. Software Choice opposes this, they call it a "categorical preference".
Conventional escrow doesn't work when customer needs it - when your company fails. A bankruptcy judge will review your company's assets, and may find that the source code is the only marketable asset, and must be preserved for your debtors. Judges have voided escrow contracts in order to maintain the remaining value of the company.
Thus, your customer is wise to ask for the source up front. And if your company is bankrupt, it's not going to matter much to you - except that you'll know you didn't screw the customer.
You need a lawyer. It's a pretty simple contract, once you've explained the parameters.
If you want to use Free-Software-friendly attorneys, I can direct you to several, but pretty much any attorney will do.
If you're going to diss Joey, you'll get a big F**K You from me, too. The other folks involved aren't devils, they're just too busy and it's time for them to let go. I also work for SPI and have some idea what's going on there... which is not much.
I don't think that someone you're talking about is Martin "Joey" Schultze. He's been a very dedicated worker for about a decade. If he says the other folks aren't putting in much time, they probably aren't.
If you want to program old microcomputer architectures, learn the PIC microcontroller, which is based on some Control Data Co. Peripheral and Input Controller (I may have the "I" wrong in that acronym). It's available in 12, 14, and 16-bit flavors. It doesn't have much of a stack. And it has the virtue that, as a $1 microprocessor, it's still practical for many projects, while a PDP-8 is really an intellectual exercise at this point.
OK, something I don't understand here. How was this boat special in that there was no escape if it got into trouble? I've seen the big training ascent tank back east, but how many sailors have actually made that trip and lived after damage to a sub?
Slashdot Mirror
There is also something called swing that is a function of time parameter changes in hand keying and can itself convey contextual information like emotion.
Bruce
Bruce
But I have a lot of doubt that UWB will perform as advertised. Sitting in the middle of few million switching transistors or so (your typical computer), it is going to run into trouble.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Power utilization improvement vs. bluetooth isn't very convincing.
Regarding 802.11a, when you arrive at the right trade off of power vs. bandwidth vs. processing gain vs. range, I'm not convinced that you will be able to demonstrate tremendously better power utilization in practice vs. a spread-spectrum system with similar characteristics.
Bruce
It happens, however, that most of the problems that come up are on the first hop between my site and my internet provider's, and I can control them. I can't guarantee that this will always be the case.
Bruce
Powerline networking. It's sort of like one of those bad movie monsters that you just can't kill. Every few years, another sequel. It has tremendous promise if you can just work out those little technical problems. But you can't. Too much noise, and they radiate, and have all sorts of reactances along the way to mess up your signal with attenuation and reflections. The best proposal for powerline networking I've seen has been to use long-distance power lines to duct microwave transmissions. But that's not broadband to the home, it's a cheap backbone with medium speed, and imagine how much better it would work if they just put a fiber along the same right-of-way.
Ultra wideband for low power, local devices is going to lose because the other transports for those devices, like bluetooth and 802.11, won't be more expensive and have fewer problems. Maybe UWB will have a few uses, but it's not going to be a big deal.
Virtual keyboards?!?! Disruptive, right.
Folks, take all of this with a big grain of salt.
Bruce
Are you trying to be a troll? If this is a serious question, go look at fsf.org . It should suffice to say that there would probably be no Mandrake distribution without their work.
Bruce
Note that this is "trusted computing" in service of the owner of the computer (in this case the police department and department of justice rather than the individual operator). The fundamental difference is that the owner of the computer is the one asking for the trusted service, rather than some other entity that does not trust the owner of the computer.
Bruce
Bruce
I haven't bothered to load the X packages yet, but OpenZaurus includes an X server. It would be nice if the switch from native Opie to X Opie could be achieved by changing a shared library, rather than by rebuilding applications.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
I sometimes enjoy Star Trek and other TV science fiction, although I don't get time to watch much of it. I've learned not to be very interested in actor appearances, because they aren't the fascinating characters they portray, they're just actors. I think I'd have more fun talking with the writers.
Bruce
Bruce
See SincereChoice.org for a platform that really would give you choice.
Bruce
Bruce
Conventional escrow doesn't work when customer needs it - when your company fails. A bankruptcy judge will review your company's assets, and may find that the source code is the only marketable asset, and must be preserved for your debtors. Judges have voided escrow contracts in order to maintain the remaining value of the company.
Thus, your customer is wise to ask for the source up front. And if your company is bankrupt, it's not going to matter much to you - except that you'll know you didn't screw the customer.
You need a lawyer. It's a pretty simple contract, once you've explained the parameters.
If you want to use Free-Software-friendly attorneys, I can direct you to several, but pretty much any attorney will do.
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce