There are already enough anti-Bush people that will take ANY change as some sort of big fuck-the-world gesture from the Bush camp. And of course despite that fact that nobody knows for sure WHY this has been implemented there will 1000 conspiracy theories posted, and dozens of pro-Kerry propaganda garbage as well.
Until there is enough information to actually discuss the topic with facts I'm not really interested...
I think it is considered a robot if it can move from Point A to Point B under it's own power and logic control ("logic" might just be recalling a pre-programmed pattern from a storage device, etc). Or also, if it stays in place, but can manipulate other objects about.
An appliance can have a large degree of intelligence, but is generally an object that does not move about after installation.
Ie: a dishwasher that plays chess on a screen is an "appliance". A dishwasher that plays chess by actually moving the pieces about on the board (via articulated arms, etc) is a "robot".
The ChannelPlus modulators take care of the "neighbor seeing your feed" problem. Not to mention that there is usually in excess of 30db of isoloation between most adjacent homes.
The low-pass filter is a good idea, but not needed on every system. Some systems broadcast something on every channel, even if it is just another copy of the guide channel, or a a blank image, others just leave the unused channels unused. My experience in working with various MSO's in the US and Canada is that most of the time the low pass filter is not needed. YMMV.
First off I will preface this with the disclaimer that I don't have kids, nor do my wife (of many years) and I ever intend to have kids...
I say skip the geek-tools baby raising. Everyone I know who *has* had kids and taken some obsessive-compulsive child-rearing tactic has ended up in a near nervous breakdown with no life of their own.
If you can't find a reputale local babysitter with references, then leave the kid in the care of a familiy member when you go out. I don't think that staring at 2" square grainy image of the kid in a crib is going to make your evening out all that enjoyable.
If you must have video surveilance, go to http://www.supercircuits.com for the video cameras. Then go to http://www.worthdist.com and get a ChannelPlus channel modulator. This allows you to put the video camera feed(s) on TV channels, so for example you tune any TV to channel 84 and there is the crib (at my house channel 84 is the driveway camera, but I digress.)
IMO, the ultimate house has no cats, but thats just me.
The exercise room is woefully inadequate. And the "Wiring Center" is pitifully small. My home theater room alone has more cables than that. I have an entire wiring closest that is about 8'x 10' with many dozen runs of Cat5 and RG6 coming into it (for a house that is not yet 100% wired, and only about 70% of the size of the DUH.
In the US prepaid phones end up costing about 2x-3x more to use than regular "monthly billed" units.
Prepaid phones here seem to be the choice of people with no/bad/poor credit and/or kids who are too young to legally sign a contract.
Granted not EVERY pre-paid phone user fits this criteria, but on the norm if you are a semi-responsible adult pre-paid phones in the US are not the best option.
I've used ExpressPCB for a lot of mini projects in the past. The rates are pretty good if you know how to maximize your layout properly, and you can get multiple boards out of 1 panel (ie: 5 silkscreened/soldermasked panels of 21sqin/ea are about $250, ($50/ea). But, if you can get 5 boards out of 1 panel (and you need 25 boards, give or take) then your per-board price is effectively $10/ea, which is reasonable for a small, custom job). The quality of the ExpressPCB boards has always been excellent.
I converted one of my projects to pad2pad just last night. Their component selection is horribly small right now (no.1uF caps?? WTF??), but the prices for boards with a few components soldered on is pretty reasonable (again, if you are ordering in a manner that spreads your cost over 25 or 30+ boards).
Nuts N Volts
is a great electronics mag, from beginner to advanced.
Electronic House is a great resource to steal ideas from.
Those are the only 2 that I really get "in person" anymore. I keep meaning to re-sub to Wired, but haven't. Most everything else is read online.
So when you are out of the Navy, your time remaining would be zero, and your happiness factor would be a math error, rather than a real number... Not sure if that is the result you intended.:)
It has nothing to do with HU being dead now. They are/were suing people for devices purchased (and supposedly used) years ago.
If they hadn't received the pressure from the EFF, and other organizations, they would have been quite happy to continue extorting funds as long as possible.
Your lack of understanding of these lawsuits is monumental.
DirecTV is/was suing people who purchased practically any bit of smartcard equipment from dealers (not just unloopers).
Their lawsuits were vaguely worded (other than the parts about them demanding $10,000 fines *per device purchased*. A passive PCB purchase landed you a $10K "fine".
DirecTVs actions took advantage of the fact that most people would be either too scared, or lacking the funding, to fight their corporate lawyer army.
The lawsuits even covered people who purchased equipment from the H-Card era, it has nothing to do with them shutting down the HU streams.
Okay, so you need a sensitive microphone to pickup the keystrokes...
"Sensitive" mics are usually a tad larger than the average little electret mic, and in any case, I am pretty sure I would notice if someone had placed a microphone near my work area (even amongst all the other gadgets and half-(full|empty) coffee cups sitting around).
This article is sort of like saying with enough time and a sturdy shovel you can dig to China. In theory, yes, in practice, no...
You must not've been around much in the DOS days. Print Screen did actually used to do exactly that. Now it is just used (in Windows at least) to grab an image of the screen to the clipboard.
As far as keys with custom text, Preh makes an LCD button switch that has a (IIRC) 64x64 pixel tiny LCD on it. I have looooong wanted to get ahold of some of these keys to build a custom keypad, but never seem to actually find a distributor that returns calls. Online ordering would be great, but I have never found them anywhere.
LEDs have been around longer than most/. readers have been alive.
Yes, they are small, low-voltage, low-current devices that can be used in a myriad of places. However, none of this crap is "kewl" or innovative. So you stuck 7 LEDs in a mousepad. Putting even 1 LED in a mousepad is pointless and stupid, 7 is just stupid^7.
The whole case/peripheral modding thing stopped being interesting a long time ago, now it is just become "what other device can I stick a clear window or LED in/on".
I think he means the VFD wants to *powered* from the serial port, which is not uncommon with these types of devices, pin 9 is often used (in proprietary setups) to supply a +12V or +5V constant voltage, with a few hunred mA of current capacity.
Actually, they're really not. They have very rarely "innovated" anything, instead they watch closely to see what others are doing and then swoop in at the last minute to try and emulate/replace/crush the dominant innovative company/technology. Ref: the Internet (they pretty much missed this one entirely at first), IE (netscape), Exchange/Outlook (groupwise, notes, etc), Media player(Real), AOL/Prodigy(MSN), Active Directory(Novell, Vines), and 1000 other things.
What kind of stores are you shopping at that they can't handle a $20 bill? And how much longer does it take to count change for a $20 vs. a $5? Maybe you need to shop at stores that aren't run out of someones wood shed.
There isn't enough data in your post to suggest *anything*.
Is this a wireless link? Is it a LAN type segment? A campus/MAN type segment? Is it copper? Is it fiber? Is it cheaper than OC-48 (which is also a 2.4Gbps link, and has been in use for many years now)?
What is your customer base? Anyone with money? Fortune 500(0)(0)(0)? Universities? Office Parks?
This is like saying "I have a car, where should I drive it", without mentioning that your car is a Mini Cooper and you are on the island of Nevis.
Anybody remember that funny info pyramid thing from about 1995 or so? It also received data over a pager network and conected to your PC via a serial port. I had one, but the reception always sucked, and the info was usually mediocre at best.
Considering the time and effort it takes to trace down the source of the fax, file the lawsuit, attend the hearing, wait for the money (if it ever comes), etc, I hardly consider this an enterprising business idea.
The article highlights one person who has collected about $6,000 over the last 3 years. That, to me, is beer money, not a cottage industry.
Most of the time, these companies are being sued by individuals, not "leeching lawyers", and I think it is good that for once the consumer has a legal avenue to prusue companies wasting a persons time and resources sending them marketing propaganda for unwanted products.
What are you using for a browser? IE? I've only ever seen this junk work in IE, and I've only seen ii in that case while looking over someones shoulder, I've never really used IE myself.
Slashdot Mirror
So what?
There are already enough anti-Bush people that will take ANY change as some sort of big fuck-the-world gesture from the Bush camp. And of course despite that fact that nobody knows for sure WHY this has been implemented there will 1000 conspiracy theories posted, and dozens of pro-Kerry propaganda garbage as well.
Until there is enough information to actually discuss the topic with facts I'm not really interested...
It's only less jobs for the stupid people :)
Someone still needs to design, build, service, support, market, etc. these new robot overlords (which I, for one, welcome).
I think it is considered a robot if it can move from Point A to Point B under it's own power and logic control ("logic" might just be recalling a pre-programmed pattern from a storage device, etc). Or also, if it stays in place, but can manipulate other objects about.
An appliance can have a large degree of intelligence, but is generally an object that does not move about after installation.
Ie: a dishwasher that plays chess on a screen is an "appliance". A dishwasher that plays chess by actually moving the pieces about on the board (via articulated arms, etc) is a "robot".
The ChannelPlus modulators take care of the "neighbor seeing your feed" problem. Not to mention that there is usually in excess of 30db of isoloation between most adjacent homes.
The low-pass filter is a good idea, but not needed on every system. Some systems broadcast something on every channel, even if it is just another copy of the guide channel, or a a blank image, others just leave the unused channels unused. My experience in working with various MSO's in the US and Canada is that most of the time the low pass filter is not needed. YMMV.
First off I will preface this with the disclaimer that I don't have kids, nor do my wife (of many years) and I ever intend to have kids...
I say skip the geek-tools baby raising. Everyone I know who *has* had kids and taken some obsessive-compulsive child-rearing tactic has ended up in a near nervous breakdown with no life of their own.
If you can't find a reputale local babysitter with references, then leave the kid in the care of a familiy member when you go out. I don't think that staring at 2" square grainy image of the kid in a crib is going to make your evening out all that enjoyable.
If you must have video surveilance, go to http://www.supercircuits.com for the video cameras. Then go to http://www.worthdist.com and get a ChannelPlus channel modulator. This allows you to put the video camera feed(s) on TV channels, so for example you tune any TV to channel 84 and there is the crib (at my house channel 84 is the driveway camera, but I digress.)
IMO, the ultimate house has no cats, but thats just me.
The exercise room is woefully inadequate. And the "Wiring Center" is pitifully small. My home theater room alone has more cables than that. I have an entire wiring closest that is about 8'x 10' with many dozen runs of Cat5 and RG6 coming into it (for a house that is not yet 100% wired, and only about 70% of the size of the DUH.
In the US prepaid phones end up costing about 2x-3x more to use than regular "monthly billed" units.
Prepaid phones here seem to be the choice of people with no/bad/poor credit and/or kids who are too young to legally sign a contract.
Granted not EVERY pre-paid phone user fits this criteria, but on the norm if you are a semi-responsible adult pre-paid phones in the US are not the best option.
I've used ExpressPCB for a lot of mini projects in the past. The rates are pretty good if you know how to maximize your layout properly, and you can get multiple boards out of 1 panel (ie: 5 silkscreened/soldermasked panels of 21sqin/ea are about $250, ($50/ea). But, if you can get 5 boards out of 1 panel (and you need 25 boards, give or take) then your per-board price is effectively $10/ea, which is reasonable for a small, custom job). The quality of the ExpressPCB boards has always been excellent.
.1uF caps?? WTF??), but the prices for boards with a few components soldered on is pretty reasonable (again, if you are ordering in a manner that spreads your cost over 25 or 30+ boards).
I converted one of my projects to pad2pad just last night. Their component selection is horribly small right now (no
FrontPanelExpress is another good option for custom metal panels.
Nuts N Volts is a great electronics mag, from beginner to advanced. Electronic House is a great resource to steal ideas from. Those are the only 2 that I really get "in person" anymore. I keep meaning to re-sub to Wired, but haven't. Most everything else is read online.
So when you are out of the Navy, your time remaining would be zero, and your happiness factor would be a math error, rather than a real number... Not sure if that is the result you intended. :)
It has nothing to do with HU being dead now. They are/were suing people for devices purchased (and supposedly used) years ago.
If they hadn't received the pressure from the EFF, and other organizations, they would have been quite happy to continue extorting funds as long as possible.
Your lack of understanding of these lawsuits is monumental.
DirecTV is/was suing people who purchased practically any bit of smartcard equipment from dealers (not just unloopers).
Their lawsuits were vaguely worded (other than the parts about them demanding $10,000 fines *per device purchased*. A passive PCB purchase landed you a $10K "fine".
DirecTVs actions took advantage of the fact that most people would be either too scared, or lacking the funding, to fight their corporate lawyer army.
The lawsuits even covered people who purchased equipment from the H-Card era, it has nothing to do with them shutting down the HU streams.
Okay, so you need a sensitive microphone to pickup the keystrokes...
"Sensitive" mics are usually a tad larger than the average little electret mic, and in any case, I am pretty sure I would notice if someone had placed a microphone near my work area (even amongst all the other gadgets and half-(full|empty) coffee cups sitting around).
This article is sort of like saying with enough time and a sturdy shovel you can dig to China. In theory, yes, in practice, no...
You must not've been around much in the DOS days. Print Screen did actually used to do exactly that. Now it is just used (in Windows at least) to grab an image of the screen to the clipboard.
As far as keys with custom text, Preh makes an LCD button switch that has a (IIRC) 64x64 pixel tiny LCD on it. I have looooong wanted to get ahold of some of these keys to build a custom keypad, but never seem to actually find a distributor that returns calls. Online ordering would be great, but I have never found them anywhere.
a personal firewall, because you need one in order to connect an unpatched system to the net and survive
Not if you use a real hardware-based firewall, which trumps the software crap any day...
LEDs have been around longer than most /. readers have been alive.
Yes, they are small, low-voltage, low-current devices that can be used in a myriad of places. However, none of this crap is "kewl" or innovative. So you stuck 7 LEDs in a mousepad. Putting even 1 LED in a mousepad is pointless and stupid, 7 is just stupid^7.
The whole case/peripheral modding thing stopped being interesting a long time ago, now it is just become "what other device can I stick a clear window or LED in/on".
I think he means the VFD wants to *powered* from the serial port, which is not uncommon with these types of devices, pin 9 is often used (in proprietary setups) to supply a +12V or +5V constant voltage, with a few hunred mA of current capacity.
Microsoft is an enormous innovator
Actually, they're really not. They have very rarely "innovated" anything, instead they watch closely to see what others are doing and then swoop in at the last minute to try and emulate/replace/crush the dominant innovative company/technology. Ref: the Internet (they pretty much missed this one entirely at first), IE (netscape), Exchange/Outlook (groupwise, notes, etc), Media player(Real), AOL/Prodigy(MSN), Active Directory(Novell, Vines), and 1000 other things.
What kind of stores are you shopping at that they can't handle a $20 bill? And how much longer does it take to count change for a $20 vs. a $5? Maybe you need to shop at stores that aren't run out of someones wood shed.
Thats a good one, I like that! You have any scenarios in mind that involve bleeding to death on an interstate?
Please do, I find your thoughtful scenarios delightfully humorous
There isn't enough data in your post to suggest *anything*.
Is this a wireless link? Is it a LAN type segment? A campus/MAN type segment? Is it copper? Is it fiber? Is it cheaper than OC-48 (which is also a 2.4Gbps link, and has been in use for many years now)?
What is your customer base? Anyone with money? Fortune 500(0)(0)(0)? Universities? Office Parks?
This is like saying "I have a car, where should I drive it", without mentioning that your car is a Mini Cooper and you are on the island of Nevis.
Anybody remember that funny info pyramid thing from about 1995 or so? It also received data over a pager network and conected to your PC via a serial port. I had one, but the reception always sucked, and the info was usually mediocre at best.
Considering the time and effort it takes to trace down the source of the fax, file the lawsuit, attend the hearing, wait for the money (if it ever comes), etc, I hardly consider this an enterprising business idea.
The article highlights one person who has collected about $6,000 over the last 3 years. That, to me, is beer money, not a cottage industry.
Most of the time, these companies are being sued by individuals, not "leeching lawyers", and I think it is good that for once the consumer has a legal avenue to prusue companies wasting a persons time and resources sending them marketing propaganda for unwanted products.
What are you using for a browser? IE? I've only ever seen this junk work in IE, and I've only seen ii in that case while looking over someones shoulder, I've never really used IE myself.