You'll find that most people have neither the time nor the inclination to get acquainted with facts concerning the things that they would be voting about
Precisely -- and that's why the system would work.
People who are politically disinterested would hardly be likely to exercise their right to exercise their own proxy on regular occasions.
Over 99% of the time, the ability for the elected representitives to carry out the job they're paid to do would go on unchallenged.
It's really just giving the power of veto back to the people. It's a safeguard to avoid a government that tries to ride roughshod over the rights of those who elected them.
Remember -- it's the very people who you claim might be a danger who are the ones that help vote in the government of the day anyway. At least RP protects citizens from putting up with four years of a government that might turn out to be excessively corrupt or self-interested.
Surely an elected representative is given the power by those who elected them to do more than just act as a proxy
Very true -- and that's why the Recoverable Proxy (RP) system isn't simply one that relies on having a voter referendum on each bill put before the house.
It is a system that allows the elected representitives to continue their role of making decisions and running the country -- but cements in place a guarantee that the privileges such a position provides are not abused.
For example -- few people would be interested in 99% of the bills that are presented and the day-to-day operation of government would effectively be unaltered by RP. However, there was a bill (such as the one which started this/. discussion) that threatened to unreasonably erode the rights of citizens, then those who objected could immediately invoke their democratic right to veto such draconian law-changes.
The mere fact that the government knew that voters had this power of veto at their disposal would, I suggest, cause them to be a little more circumspect when trying to mess with people's rights or pass legislation that isn't necessarily going to reflect the wishes of the majority.
Any government that consistently attempted to pass legislation that was voted down by the population at large would then have to think long and hard about whether they were doing their job properly -- and everyone else would know it.
It's the one thing that's been missing from politics for a long, long time -- accountability!
Although we're constantly told that we're living in a democracy, the reality is that we are not.
Most Western "democratic" countries operate a system that involves the election of representatives who are chosen by the people to speak on their behalf in government.
The unfortunate reality is that these representatives are almost always looking out for their own interests ahead of those of the people who elected them. "Power corrupts" as they say.
These representative systems were devised hundreds of years ago when it was simply impractical to run a true democracy and, at the time, they constituted the most democratic solution to the problem of allowing the people to dictate their own future.
Clearly it would have been absolutely impractical to have every citizen voting on every decision related to the running of the country.
But it's now the 21st century and things have changed -- a lot!
Now we have the power to let individuals exercise their own democratic right to have a say in the decisions made by government.
Several years ago I proposed that we now have the technology to implment a truly democratic system that would effectively impose strong checks and balances on the excesses of our elected representitives.
I documented this system (as it applies to the New Zealand political system) here.
The idea is to acknowledge that an elected representitive is effectively doing little more than exercising the proxy of the voters in their constituency.
Until now, the only real democratic right that citizens had was to elect a different representitive at the end of each term. Now that's a very coarse form of democracy and offers little protection for the public.
My suggestion is that each voter be entitled to withdraw their proxy and exercise it individually if they choose to do so on an issue by issue basis.
In the event that a government tries to pass legislation which is not supported by a majority of the voters, those voters can recover their proxy and vote against it.
The technology to allow such a "recoverable proxy" situation can be as simple as a telephone, ATM or Internet connection.
Unlike other proposed improvements to the democratic process which involve cumbersome methods such as regular referenda, this system allows our elected representitives to carry on as normal, exercising the proxies of their constituents-- but simply reserves the publics right to say "no" when that representitive decides to place his or his party's interests ahead of the majority choice of the people he/she has been elected to serve.
Of course politicians don't want a bean of this proposal -- because it would significantly curb their ability to rort the system and remove their ability to place self-interest ahead of the public's right to be democratically represented.
A change like this would likely require a massive outcry by public -- and our politicians would have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
Just as the audio cassette has all but died, replaced by CD, CDR, CDRW, minidisk and memory sticks -- so the video tape cassette will also soon be dead.
Remember that several companies tried to breathe life into the dying audio cassette format by fancy analog and digital techniques designed to increase the dynamic range and frequency response -- but it was sheer futility.
And this is how it will be with tape-based video recording, be it analog or digital.
With writeable and rewriteable CD and DVD media cheap and still falling, it's only a matter of time before the video cassette (regardless of its resolution) joins that old turntable you've got up in the attic.
I'm already starting to record many of the programs I want to keep for posterity (such as Junkyard wars episodes) onto CDR or VCD.
Using this technique I can use low resolution (VCD/MPEG1) when I want compatibility with DVD players, higher resolution SVCD (for the DVD) or Divx for the PC.
I've been able to cram nearly two hours of near-VHS quality video and audio onto a single 700MB CDR and at the current price of CDRs, that's a media cost that is lower than for VHS recording.
I've also burnt a few movies using high bitrate Divx encoding and I can still get a near-broadcast quality recording of an entire movie on a high-capacity CDR.
Once DVDR/RW drives and their media get cheaper then tape will be well and truly dead -- thank goodness.
I'm actually really pissed right now that some rare music vids I taped about four or five years ago on a top-of-the-line Sony VCR will no longer play cleanly. I paid a premium for top-quality tape, stored them very carefully and they've only been played a handful of times but now, when I went to burn them to CDR, they won't all play without color and stereo sound drop-outs in a few places.
Give me disk-based media over tape anyday!
Of course there will probably be a whole clique of videophiles who'll come out of the woodwork and claim that analog recordings have a better "warmth" and color tones than their digital equivalents.
These sandal-wearing, yoghurt-loving, tree-huggers would also just love to have a VCR that was filled with vacuum tubes rather than silicon -- so that the sound was also good:)
Some words of advice on UPSes
on
Do-it-yourself UPS
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· Score: 5, Informative
I have two UPSes -- I used to have three but one died a horrible death for no apparent reason.
The smallest unit I have is a 600VA no-name Taiwanese box with two 7A SLAs. It has no fan and, although it's just an SBS, it still runs hot as hell.
As a result of this hot running, I discovered that the SLAs tend to dry out rather quickly such that you get a much shorter time than you'd expect when the mains power goes off (as I discovered just the other night:-(
My other box is a Siemens 1KVA full-time UPS with forced ventilation and a bunch of other cool features.
It's worth noting that even a fan-cooled UPS such as the Siemens can run way too hot -- as I discovered about a year after I installed it.
Without warning, the UPS started screeming at me with a continuous alarm buzzer. It was still working but it was not at all happy.
On touching the case I discovered why -- it was too hot to touch.
I shut things down really quickly and opened up the case to see what was wrong...
Dust!
The intake holes in the front panel have a fine wire mesh over them and, since this UPS (like most others) lives on the floor under my desk, enough dust had been sucked into the holes to totally block them.
So here's a DC-AC inverter busy delivering about 500W of power to several computers and monitors -- but without the benefit of any cooling. No wonder it wasn't happy.
I blew the filters out with compressed air, checked that the fan was okay and put it back together. It's been working fine for nearly two years since -- albeit that I check and clean the intake meshes every few months now.
That the Siemens box was smart enough to warn me it was in distress (rather than just failing) shows that nobody ever regretted buying quality.
So.. rules of thumb for UPSes...
If it runs hot-- expect the batteries to last just 18 months to 2 years -- and don't wait until the power fails to find out that you should have changed them already.
If you have a fan-cooled UPS mount it up off the floor or check that the cooling holes are clear at regular intervals.
As others have said here, it's very likely that the dual-layer disk being contemplated would have a very poor quality version of the recording -- maybe even with voice-over ads at the start and end of each track -- who knows?
It's also a shame to see the RIAA trying to charge more for what is effectively the same material. Even if it's being offered at a higher digital resolution, it shouldn't cost them that much more to provide it -- besides which, does the average music listener really want to pay more for higher quality?
Hell, the quality of CD music sounds just fine for my heavy-metal-abused ears anyway - all those extra bits (and the money I'd pay for them) would just be wasted.
And here's an interesting article which provides some rather nice evidence to support allegations that Sony is being hypocritical in respect to CD ripping and downloading music from the Net.
Focus your energies on something else than a rehash of a V-1. Who'd want a bike or ultralight powered by 500 explosions a second at white heat and 150dB SPL of sound?
Mainly the military who are currently spending huge sums of money on gas turbine engines that get to run for a grand total of maybe two hours before the missile they're in hits its target.
Nobody much cares about how much noise a missile engine makes -- key criteria are cost, fuel efficiency, power to weight and reliability.
There's no way my engine will ever sit on the wing of a 747 or other passenger jet -- but it's clearly not designed for that role.
It *is* designed for a very narrow (but rapidly growing) market segment.
The cruise missile has become the offensive weapon of choice for the West and played a very significant role in both the Gulf war and Afghanistan.
Of course people might (and do) want to strap such an engine to a bike, ultralite or kart -- simply because it can provide more power per dollar than any other type of jet engine.
If you've every stood close to a turbojet engine when it's running, you'll also become very quickly aware of the fact that *all* jet engines make a hell of a lot of noise.
Don't forget that people also strap huge V8s with massive superchargers and open pipes producing incredibly large amounts of noise to their dragsters drag bikes too.
As someone who qualifies as a "lonely inventor" (see my latest invention) I can say with some authority that there are occasionally some definite advantages to working outside the huge corporate structure.
For a start, many of those working within the corporate machine have obtained their position as a result of a splended array of formal qualifications and their academic background.
Now, while such a background is extremely important, there are occasions when it actually makes the act of "inventing" an awful lot harder.
Some of the most interesting (and practical) inventions are the result of someone who didn't know (because they hadn't been taught) that something was impossible -- so they just went ahead and did it.
An unfortunate effect of gaining a depth of knowledge is that one's field of vision is often reduced as a result. Sometimes an important innovation comes as a result of applying knowledge gained in a totally different field to a problem.
It's been my experience that occasionally the "experts" get so close to the problem that they can't easily see the bigger picture -- a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees so to speak.
Of course the reality is that if "the lone inventor" does have a good idea, they're then left with no choice but to solicit the help of a large corporation and the resources that such an organization can bring to bear. There's usually a huge void between an idea or a working prototype, and a commercially successful product.
The inventor and his invention are just one piece of the puzzle.
Of course (as I well know), the biggest problem faced by many inventors, regardless of the quality or viability of their ideas, is getting the right "big corporation" interested enough to provide those missing pieces.
I shudder to think about just how many great ideas have never seen the light of day -- not because the inventor couldn't invent, but because (s)he simply had no luck in attracting corporate or investment interest.
Of course anyone wanting to invest in my X-Jet engine is welcome to contact me:-)
Using model airplanes as a military tool is very popular these days and some of the more sophisticated ones (such as the X-45) may well be the future of "safe" combat.
However, don't fall into the trap of thinking that the US is the only force to have such combat tools or that this "off the shelf" technology can't be used against targets with the borders of the USA.
Check out The Low Cost Cruise Missile scenario for some insight into the opportunity this stuff gives to half-smart terrorist groups.
If anyone can build something like this using "off the shelf materials" for "$10,000", then why did it take $200 million in research for the US to figure out how to make them for $10 million a pop? I don't get it.
Clearly you don't understand how the defense idnustry and its contractors work.
Just ask the price of a single nut, bolt or screw when purchased from a defense contractor and you'll realize that "military spec" carries an incredible premium.
You must also realize that the type of "bomebuilt RPV" being refered to is not as large or sophisticated as the ones the US military are planning to use -- but they don't have to be.
It doesn't matter how expensive YOUR gun is, it only takes a $0.05 bullet fired from your enemy's $50 AK47 to kill you.
In the case of cruise missiles, a Tomahawk can carry a very large payload over distances in excess of 1,000 miles and deliver it with pinpoint accuracy -- within just a yard or two of the intended target.
From a terrorist perspective you don't need (and certainly don't want to pay for) that level of performance.
It's much cheaper to drive your SUV or pickup to within 200-300 miles of your target and, if you're dropping a biological agent or "dirty" nuclear material then you only have to be within a Km or so of your intended target to score an effective hit.
The USA plays ethical by trying to avoid civilian and collateral casualties -- it's the goal of the terrorist to take out as many innocent civilians as they can. See how the differing objectives can be met by differing levels of sophistication and cost?
We use space-age technology to accomplish cave-man goals. We don't need better weapons, we somehow need better people
No, we need a global gaming treaty.
Let's face it, although some argue that computer war games are becoming increasingly realistic the real truth is that real war is becoming increasingly computer game-like.
Let's hope that eventually everyone will wake up and realize that instead of wasting billions of dollars on *real* weapons, nations can resolve their problems far more cheaply by simply firing up their PS4 and shooting at each other that way.
After all -- is there really any difference?
In both cases (UAVs/RPVs and computer games) nobody gets hurt.
In both cases the outcome is based on pressing buttons and strategic actions/reactions.
In both cases the outcome is a winner and a loser.
If we simply moved all these conflicts onto the Playstation then war could actually become fashionable -- a recreation that the whole family could enjoy.
Who would have guessed that computer games might become the planet's last hope for global peace?
The really worrying thing about the way that technology has advanced at an ever-increasing pace is the fact that it now places some similar powerful offensive capabilities well within the grasp of terrorists and smaller countries.
UAVs, RPVs and cruise missiles are a perfect example of a technology that is well within the reach of such foes of the USA.
The ready availability of low-cost GPS units with computer interfaces, small and efficient low cost high powered computers, advanced composites such as kevlar and carbon-fiber, solid-state gyros, high-power servos and cheap but powerful jet engines (such as this or maybe this) has lowered the barrier to entry significantly.
Up until now the might and technical superiority of the US defense arsenal has proved a mighty deterrent and (when used) a mighty effective tool in battle.
The only response that terrorists and small factions have had to the US's superiority has been to offer suicide bombings and attacks such as those of September 11.
However, now that just about anyone (or group) with access to some readily available knowledge and equipment can produce their own cruise missile , RPV or AUV, things could begin to change -- for the worse.
Imagine the effect that such a craft would have if it were programmed to fly over NYC and dispense a payload of anthrax or other bio-agent over a wide area as it went?
Such a remotely piloted or autonomous vehicle could be built for as little as US$10,000 and could be launched from the roof of a van or SUV at a location which might be several hundred miles from the intended target.
The use of a fairly small airframe built from composites would mean a low radar profile and the onboard computer operating in concert with an onboard GPS receiver and small radar distancing system would allow a low-altitude pre-programmed flight path to be followed with relative ease.
That good numbers of these machines could be built using "off the shelf" materials and components that would not ring any bells in the way that the training of Al Qaeda pilots did, is worrying.
Imagine the effect of 20 or 30 of these missiles being launched simultaneously at NYC or LA on a warm summer's day when plenty of people are outdoors enjoying the sun.
Just as the X-45, Tomahawk and other remotely piloted or automomous weapons can impersonalize a war for the USA, we should be aware that the same may now be true for the USA's foes. Suicide bombing may become redundant real soon now.
I can absolutely recommend a book called Code Complete [amazon.com]. Yes, it is published by Microsoft
Yes, that's on my bookshelf -- but, given the fact that they go to great lengths to point out the importance of checking for buffer over/under-runs and fencepost errors, one can't help wondering if (in the wake of all those critical bugs in IE/Outlook/IIS) any of Microsoft's own programmers have read it.
It's been quite a while since I wrote any significant amount of code but after spending far too many years cutting code too early in the development process I eventually woke up to the fact that coding is the *last* thing you do (apart from testing and debugging that is).
First-up you need a good spec -- and the spec should include the user-interface details to the extent that you could actually write the user-manual from that spec.
Indeed -- if you can't write the user-manual from the spec then the spec is incomplete.
From the spec the programmer should develop the structure of the code in another document.
That structure document is repeatedly refined in a top-down process until you (eventually) reach a point where you're actually cutting code.
I was always surprised just how much easier it was when the code was written as the lowest level of the structure documentation.
Not only could you comment out the program structure document so that the compiler would ignore it -- but you ended up with absolutely accurate and comprehensive documentation built into that source.
Project managers love this technique (and when I was in a project management role I demanded it of my team) -- it ensures that technical and end-user documentation are no longer the bits that get left until last and thus are either very shoddily thrown together or, if the project goes really over-budget, not produced at all.
Of course, as we all know, there's a huge amount of temptation to just leap into coding at the earliest possible stage and leave the documentation until later -- because some stupid managers use number of code-lines completed as a metric of project performance -- duh!
If you're smart and use good tools you can selectively collapse and expand the in-source documentation so that when you're trying to get familiar with a module that someone else has written, you can descend down the structure tree one level at a time without the meaning being diluted by stuff that is at a lower level.
Unlike the days of interpreted BASIC, there's very little overhead involved in integrating documentation and code these days -- so there's no excuse not to do it.
If required, the documentation can be automatically extracted from the source -- but by keeping the master copy in the code it becomes easier to ensure synchronization as changes and updates are made during the lifecycle of the project.
It's got to be the worst free email service on the Net when it comes to reliability, security, spam and superfluous fluff associated with your mail.
When I discovered how much simpler and cleaner YahooMail was I ditched my HotMail account and never regretted it for a moment.
Okay, Yahoo may still change your marketing preferences, but at least they had the decency to let you know about it and give you a chance to reverse the changes before adding you to a long list of lists.
However, the best thing of all about YahooMail is that I get an incredibly small amount of spam arriving in my yahoomail email box.
Either their spam filtering is far more effective, or spammers consider Hotmail user to be dumber (and therefore more likely to believe that you can earn $50,000 a month stuffing envelopes).
I also get a 6MB mailbox for free (perhaps because I was an early adopter -- I don't think they're quite as generous for new signups) and the service seems very reliable.
With my Javascript turned off I don't even see the pop-up ads that can be such a PITA when browsing Yahoo's properties.
Yahoo may be far from perfect but it's a whole lot better than Hotmail that's an absolute undeniable fact.
Think about this for a moment -- on the one hand we have Sony (and other recording companies) telling us that we shouldn't be copying music and burning CDRs.
On the other hand, Sony are more than happy to take our money when we buy one of their CDR/RW drives, their CDR/RW media and their various audio recording products.
Should they sue themselves under the DMCA I wonder?
Or are they just so stupid that they're hoping nobody will notice this crazy situation?
Over five years ago I wrote this column in which I offered Bill Gates a "billion dollar" idea to help him achieve his goal of taking over the Internet.
Perhaps the situation with RealNames is just a precursor to the implementation of this plan by Billy-boy?
I bet if they weren't so worried about anti-trust laws, Microsoft would have already done this.
As the founder and (from 1997-2000) editor of 7am.com, a "net-only" news service that has its content syndicated through a network of almost a quarter-million 3rd-party webpages, I adopted a different strategy to updating news stories.
Instead of rewriting an entire story as events unfolded I felt it was more "honest" to publish updates alongside the previous reports.
This produced stories which had the latest facts at the top and the initial report at the bottom -- with each update clearly delineated.
By using this method, readers were able to see for themselves whether we'd made mistakes and therefore judge the quality and timeliness of our reporting.
Clearly the meteoric growth of 7am.com vindicated (to at least some degree) this approach of "honest reporting."
Since I withdrew from all management and editorial involvement in 7am.com they appear to have changed their editorial policy to follow that of the other news publishers.
In an interview with Australia's Channel Nine this week, Elton John attributed the decline in CD sales not to piracy or the Internet -- but to the "crap" that the industry is trying to pass off as music.
It was refreshing to hear this sentiment echoed by an artist of such standing in the music industry.
Nice to know that there are still some recording artists that haven't sold out.
Slashdot Mirror
You'll find that most people have neither the time nor the inclination to get acquainted with facts concerning the things that they would be voting about
Precisely -- and that's why the system would work.
People who are politically disinterested would hardly be likely to exercise their right to exercise their own proxy on regular occasions.
Over 99% of the time, the ability for the elected representitives to carry out the job they're paid to do would go on unchallenged.
It's really just giving the power of veto back to the people. It's a safeguard to avoid a government that tries to ride roughshod over the rights of those who elected them.
Remember -- it's the very people who you claim might be a danger who are the ones that help vote in the government of the day anyway. At least RP protects citizens from putting up with four years of a government that might turn out to be excessively corrupt or self-interested.
Surely an elected representative is given the power by those who elected them to do more than just act as a proxy
/. discussion) that threatened to unreasonably erode the rights of citizens, then those who objected could immediately invoke their democratic right to veto such draconian law-changes.
Very true -- and that's why the Recoverable Proxy (RP) system isn't simply one that relies on having a voter referendum on each bill put before the house.
It is a system that allows the elected representitives to continue their role of making decisions and running the country -- but cements in place a guarantee that the privileges such a position provides are not abused.
For example -- few people would be interested in 99% of the bills that are presented and the day-to-day operation of government would effectively be unaltered by RP. However, there was a bill (such as the one which started this
The mere fact that the government knew that voters had this power of veto at their disposal would, I suggest, cause them to be a little more circumspect when trying to mess with people's rights or pass legislation that isn't necessarily going to reflect the wishes of the majority.
Any government that consistently attempted to pass legislation that was voted down by the population at large would then have to think long and hard about whether they were doing their job properly -- and everyone else would know it.
It's the one thing that's been missing from politics for a long, long time -- accountability!
Although we're constantly told that we're living in a democracy, the reality is that we are not.
.
Most Western "democratic" countries operate a system that involves the election of representatives who are chosen by the people to speak on their behalf in government.
The unfortunate reality is that these representatives are almost always looking out for their own interests ahead of those of the people who elected them. "Power corrupts" as they say.
These representative systems were devised hundreds of years ago when it was simply impractical to run a true democracy and, at the time, they constituted the most democratic solution to the problem of allowing the people to dictate their own future.
Clearly it would have been absolutely impractical to have every citizen voting on every decision related to the running of the country.
But it's now the 21st century and things have changed -- a lot!
Now we have the power to let individuals exercise their own democratic right to have a say in the decisions made by government.
Several years ago I proposed that we now have the technology to implment a truly democratic system that would effectively impose strong checks and balances on the excesses of our elected representitives.
I documented this system (as it applies to the New Zealand political system)
here.
The idea is to acknowledge that an elected representitive is effectively doing little more than exercising the proxy of the voters in their constituency.
Until now, the only real democratic right that citizens had was to elect a different representitive at the end of each term. Now that's a very coarse form of democracy and offers little protection for the public.
My suggestion is that each voter be entitled to withdraw their proxy and exercise it individually if they choose to do so on an issue by issue basis
In the event that a government tries to pass legislation which is not supported by a majority of the voters, those voters can recover their proxy and vote against it.
The technology to allow such a "recoverable proxy" situation can be as simple as a telephone, ATM or Internet connection.
Unlike other proposed improvements to the democratic process which involve cumbersome methods such as regular referenda, this system allows our elected representitives to carry on as normal, exercising the proxies of their constituents-- but simply reserves the publics right to say "no" when that representitive decides to place his or his party's interests ahead of the majority choice of the people he/she has been elected to serve.
Of course politicians don't want a bean of this proposal -- because it would significantly curb their ability to rort the system and remove their ability to place self-interest ahead of the public's right to be democratically represented.
A change like this would likely require a massive outcry by public -- and our politicians would have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
What do you think?
I remember researching firewall products and stumbled across one that ran on MS-DOS. According to the marketing hype, MS-DOS was the OS of choice
:-)
Cool... just what everyone needs... a single-user, single-tasking firewall.
Why not call it a brick-wall?
Tape is dead -- RIP
:)
Just as the audio cassette has all but died, replaced by CD, CDR, CDRW, minidisk and memory sticks -- so the video tape cassette will also soon be dead.
Remember that several companies tried to breathe life into the dying audio cassette format by fancy analog and digital techniques designed to increase the dynamic range and frequency response -- but it was sheer futility.
And this is how it will be with tape-based video recording, be it analog or digital.
With writeable and rewriteable CD and DVD media cheap and still falling, it's only a matter of time before the video cassette (regardless of its resolution) joins that old turntable you've got up in the attic.
I'm already starting to record many of the programs I want to keep for posterity (such as Junkyard wars episodes) onto CDR or VCD.
Using this technique I can use low resolution (VCD/MPEG1) when I want compatibility with DVD players, higher resolution SVCD (for the DVD) or Divx for the PC.
I've been able to cram nearly two hours of near-VHS quality video and audio onto a single 700MB CDR and at the current price of CDRs, that's a media cost that is lower than for VHS recording.
I've also burnt a few movies using high bitrate Divx encoding and I can still get a near-broadcast quality recording of an entire movie on a high-capacity CDR.
Once DVDR/RW drives and their media get cheaper then tape will be well and truly dead -- thank goodness.
I'm actually really pissed right now that some rare music vids I taped about four or five years ago on a top-of-the-line Sony VCR will no longer play cleanly. I paid a premium for top-quality tape, stored them very carefully and they've only been played a handful of times but now, when I went to burn them to CDR, they won't all play without color and stereo sound drop-outs in a few places.
Give me disk-based media over tape anyday!
Of course there will probably be a whole clique of videophiles who'll come out of the woodwork and claim that analog recordings have a better "warmth" and color tones than their digital equivalents.
These sandal-wearing, yoghurt-loving, tree-huggers would also just love to have a VCR that was filled with vacuum tubes rather than silicon -- so that the sound was also good
I have two UPSes -- I used to have three but one died a horrible death for no apparent reason.
:-(
The smallest unit I have is a 600VA no-name Taiwanese box with two 7A SLAs. It has no fan and, although it's just an SBS, it still runs hot as hell.
As a result of this hot running, I discovered that the SLAs tend to dry out rather quickly such that you get a much shorter time than you'd expect when the mains power goes off (as I discovered just the other night
My other box is a Siemens 1KVA full-time UPS with forced ventilation and a bunch of other cool features.
It's worth noting that even a fan-cooled UPS such as the Siemens can run way too hot -- as I discovered about a year after I installed it.
Without warning, the UPS started screeming at me with a continuous alarm buzzer. It was still working but it was not at all happy.
On touching the case I discovered why -- it was too hot to touch.
I shut things down really quickly and opened up the case to see what was wrong...
Dust!
The intake holes in the front panel have a fine wire mesh over them and, since this UPS (like most others) lives on the floor under my desk, enough dust had been sucked into the holes to totally block them.
So here's a DC-AC inverter busy delivering about 500W of power to several computers and monitors -- but without the benefit of any cooling. No wonder it wasn't happy.
I blew the filters out with compressed air, checked that the fan was okay and put it back together. It's been working fine for nearly two years since -- albeit that I check and clean the intake meshes every few months now.
That the Siemens box was smart enough to warn me it was in distress (rather than just failing) shows that nobody ever regretted buying quality.
So.. rules of thumb for UPSes...
If it runs hot-- expect the batteries to last just 18 months to 2 years -- and don't wait until the power fails to find out that you should have changed them already.
If you have a fan-cooled UPS mount it up off the floor or check that the cooling holes are clear at regular intervals.
Oh dear, I must have been doing it wrong.
I paid the optional (I think it was) $10 for WinAmp when they were soliciting payment for their product after I donwnloaded it and found it useful.
I paid for Paintshop Pro after I downloaded a trial version and discovered that I liked it.
I paid for MultiEdit after I downloaded it and discovered that it was a pretty damned good programmer's editor
In fact I'm so dumb that I've paid for all commercial or semi-commercial software I've downloaded and found useful.
Hell -- I hope the BSA don't trace this posting, they'll probably send a hit man around to take me out so that I don't skew their stats!
As others have said here, it's very likely that the dual-layer disk being contemplated would have a very poor quality version of the recording -- maybe even with voice-over ads at the start and end of each track -- who knows?
It's also a shame to see the RIAA trying to charge more for what is effectively the same material. Even if it's being offered at a higher digital resolution, it shouldn't cost them that much more to provide it -- besides which, does the average music listener really want to pay more for higher quality?
Hell, the quality of CD music sounds just fine for my heavy-metal-abused ears anyway - all those extra bits (and the money I'd pay for them) would just be wasted.
And here's an interesting article which provides some rather nice evidence to support allegations that Sony is being hypocritical in respect to CD ripping and downloading music from the Net.
Someone ought to tell those folks over at Space.com that the word antennae applies only to the sensory projections of an insect.
When you're talking about radio receivers, the plural of antenna is antennas.
It's in the dictionary if you don't believe me.
Well it doesn't work for me NS4.5, Flash installed but Javascript disabled.
;-)
It sat there for 40 seconds counting away the seconds and then told me:
"the connection with kartoo failed. If the problem persists, you can send us a message on kartoo@kartoo.com and we will try to find a solution:-)"
Maybe it didn't like my firewall? maybe javascript is mandatory? Maybe it's just slashdotted?
Whatever the reason, I see little use for a search engine that doesn't work -- regardless of how pretty the graphics are
Focus your energies on something else than a rehash of a V-1. Who'd want a bike or ultralight powered by 500 explosions a second at white heat and 150dB SPL of sound?
Mainly the military who are currently spending huge sums of money on gas turbine engines that get to run for a grand total of maybe two hours before the missile they're in hits its target.
Nobody much cares about how much noise a missile engine makes -- key criteria are cost, fuel efficiency, power to weight and reliability.
There's no way my engine will ever sit on the wing of a 747 or other passenger jet -- but it's clearly not designed for that role.
It *is* designed for a very narrow (but rapidly growing) market segment.
The cruise missile has become the offensive weapon of choice for the West and played a very significant role in both the Gulf war and Afghanistan.
Of course people might (and do) want to strap such an engine to a bike, ultralite or kart -- simply because it can provide more power per dollar than any other type of jet engine.
If you've every stood close to a turbojet engine when it's running, you'll also become very quickly aware of the fact that *all* jet engines make a hell of a lot of noise.
Don't forget that people also strap huge V8s with massive superchargers and open pipes producing incredibly large amounts of noise to their dragsters drag bikes too.
As someone who qualifies as a "lonely inventor" (see my latest invention) I can say with some authority that there are occasionally some definite advantages to working outside the huge corporate structure.
:-)
For a start, many of those working within the corporate machine have obtained their position as a result of a splended array of formal qualifications and their academic background.
Now, while such a background is extremely important, there are occasions when it actually makes the act of "inventing" an awful lot harder.
Some of the most interesting (and practical) inventions are the result of someone who didn't know (because they hadn't been taught) that something was impossible -- so they just went ahead and did it.
An unfortunate effect of gaining a depth of knowledge is that one's field of vision is often reduced as a result. Sometimes an important innovation comes as a result of applying knowledge gained in a totally different field to a problem.
It's been my experience that occasionally the "experts" get so close to the problem that they can't easily see the bigger picture -- a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees so to speak.
Of course the reality is that if "the lone inventor" does have a good idea, they're then left with no choice but to solicit the help of a large corporation and the resources that such an organization can bring to bear. There's usually a huge void between an idea or a working prototype, and a commercially successful product.
The inventor and his invention are just one piece of the puzzle.
Of course (as I well know), the biggest problem faced by many inventors, regardless of the quality or viability of their ideas, is getting the right "big corporation" interested enough to provide those missing pieces.
I shudder to think about just how many great ideas have never seen the light of day -- not because the inventor couldn't invent, but because (s)he simply had no luck in attracting corporate or investment interest.
Of course anyone wanting to invest in my X-Jet engine is welcome to contact me
Hang on... 500 meters?
;-)
How do we know that Mars is metric?
Even NASA and its European contractors couldn't agree on whether metric or imperal measurements apply to the red planet.
I don't think anyone should jump to conclusions over this
Using model airplanes as a military tool is very popular these days and some of the more sophisticated ones (such as the X-45) may well be the future of "safe" combat.
However, don't fall into the trap of thinking that the US is the only force to have such combat tools or that this "off the shelf" technology can't be used against targets with the borders of the USA.
Check out The Low Cost Cruise Missile scenario for some insight into the opportunity this stuff gives to half-smart terrorist groups.
If anyone can build something like this using "off the shelf materials" for "$10,000", then why did it take $200 million in research for the US to figure out how to make them for $10 million a pop? I don't get it.
Clearly you don't understand how the defense idnustry and its contractors work.
Just ask the price of a single nut, bolt or screw when purchased from a defense contractor and you'll realize that "military spec" carries an incredible premium.
You must also realize that the type of "bomebuilt RPV" being refered to is not as large or sophisticated as the ones the US military are planning to use -- but they don't have to be.
It doesn't matter how expensive YOUR gun is, it only takes a $0.05 bullet fired from your enemy's $50 AK47 to kill you.
In the case of cruise missiles, a Tomahawk can carry a very large payload over distances in excess of 1,000 miles and deliver it with pinpoint accuracy -- within just a yard or two of the intended target.
From a terrorist perspective you don't need (and certainly don't want to pay for) that level of performance.
It's much cheaper to drive your SUV or pickup to within 200-300 miles of your target and, if you're dropping a biological agent or "dirty" nuclear material then you only have to be within a Km or so of your intended target to score an effective hit.
The USA plays ethical by trying to avoid civilian and collateral casualties -- it's the goal of the terrorist to take out as many innocent civilians as they can. See how the differing objectives can be met by differing levels of sophistication and cost?
We use space-age technology to accomplish cave-man goals. We don't need better weapons, we somehow need better people
No, we need a global gaming treaty.
Let's face it, although some argue that computer war games are becoming increasingly realistic the real truth is that real war is becoming increasingly computer game-like.
Let's hope that eventually everyone will wake up and realize that instead of wasting billions of dollars on *real* weapons, nations can resolve their problems far more cheaply by simply firing up their PS4 and shooting at each other that way.
After all -- is there really any difference?
In both cases (UAVs/RPVs and computer games) nobody gets hurt.
In both cases the outcome is based on pressing buttons and strategic actions/reactions.
In both cases the outcome is a winner and a loser.
If we simply moved all these conflicts onto the Playstation then war could actually become fashionable -- a recreation that the whole family could enjoy.
Who would have guessed that computer games might become the planet's last hope for global peace?
The really worrying thing about the way that technology has advanced at an ever-increasing pace is the fact that it now places some similar powerful offensive capabilities well within the grasp of terrorists and smaller countries.
UAVs, RPVs and cruise missiles are a perfect example of a technology that is well within the reach of such foes of the USA.
The ready availability of low-cost GPS units with computer interfaces, small and efficient low cost high powered computers, advanced composites such as kevlar and carbon-fiber, solid-state gyros, high-power servos and cheap but powerful jet engines (such as this or maybe this) has lowered the barrier to entry significantly.
Up until now the might and technical superiority of the US defense arsenal has proved a mighty deterrent and (when used) a mighty effective tool in battle.
The only response that terrorists and small factions have had to the US's superiority has been to offer suicide bombings and attacks such as those of September 11.
However, now that just about anyone (or group) with access to some readily available knowledge and equipment can produce their own cruise missile , RPV or AUV, things could begin to change -- for the worse.
Imagine the effect that such a craft would have if it were programmed to fly over NYC and dispense a payload of anthrax or other bio-agent over a wide area as it went?
Such a remotely piloted or autonomous vehicle could be built for as little as US$10,000 and could be launched from the roof of a van or SUV at a location which might be several hundred miles from the intended target.
The use of a fairly small airframe built from composites would mean a low radar profile and the onboard computer operating in concert with an onboard GPS receiver and small radar distancing system would allow a low-altitude pre-programmed flight path to be followed with relative ease.
That good numbers of these machines could be built using "off the shelf" materials and components that would not ring any bells in the way that the training of Al Qaeda pilots did, is worrying.
Imagine the effect of 20 or 30 of these missiles being launched simultaneously at NYC or LA on a warm summer's day when plenty of people are outdoors enjoying the sun.
Just as the X-45, Tomahawk and other remotely piloted or automomous weapons can impersonalize a war for the USA, we should be aware that the same may now be true for the USA's foes. Suicide bombing may become redundant real soon now.
I can absolutely recommend a book called Code Complete [amazon.com]. Yes, it is published by Microsoft
Yes, that's on my bookshelf -- but, given the fact that they go to great lengths to point out the importance of checking for buffer over/under-runs and fencepost errors, one can't help wondering if (in the wake of all those critical bugs in IE/Outlook/IIS) any of Microsoft's own programmers have read it.
More "do as we say, not as we do" from Microsoft?
It's been quite a while since I wrote any significant amount of code but after spending far too many years cutting code too early in the development process I eventually woke up to the fact that coding is the *last* thing you do (apart from testing and debugging that is).
First-up you need a good spec -- and the spec should include the user-interface details to the extent that you could actually write the user-manual from that spec.
Indeed -- if you can't write the user-manual from the spec then the spec is incomplete.
From the spec the programmer should develop the structure of the code in another document.
That structure document is repeatedly refined in a top-down process until you (eventually) reach a point where you're actually cutting code.
I was always surprised just how much easier it was when the code was written as the lowest level of the structure documentation.
Not only could you comment out the program structure document so that the compiler would ignore it -- but you ended up with absolutely accurate and comprehensive documentation built into that source.
Project managers love this technique (and when I was in a project management role I demanded it of my team) -- it ensures that technical and end-user documentation are no longer the bits that get left until last and thus are either very shoddily thrown together or, if the project goes really over-budget, not produced at all.
Of course, as we all know, there's a huge amount of temptation to just leap into coding at the earliest possible stage and leave the documentation until later -- because some stupid managers use number of code-lines completed as a metric of project performance -- duh!
If you're smart and use good tools you can selectively collapse and expand the in-source documentation so that when you're trying to get familiar with a module that someone else has written, you can descend down the structure tree one level at a time without the meaning being diluted by stuff that is at a lower level.
Unlike the days of interpreted BASIC, there's very little overhead involved in integrating documentation and code these days -- so there's no excuse not to do it.
If required, the documentation can be automatically extracted from the source -- but by keeping the master copy in the code it becomes easier to ensure synchronization as changes and updates are made during the lifecycle of the project.
Why are people still using Hotmail?
It's got to be the worst free email service on the Net when it comes to reliability, security, spam and superfluous fluff associated with your mail.
When I discovered how much simpler and cleaner YahooMail was I ditched my HotMail account and never regretted it for a moment.
Okay, Yahoo may still change your marketing preferences, but at least they had the decency to let you know about it and give you a chance to reverse the changes before adding you to a long list of lists.
However, the best thing of all about YahooMail is that I get an incredibly small amount of spam arriving in my yahoomail email box.
Either their spam filtering is far more effective, or spammers consider Hotmail user to be dumber (and therefore more likely to believe that you can earn $50,000 a month stuffing envelopes).
I also get a 6MB mailbox for free (perhaps because I was an early adopter -- I don't think they're quite as generous for new signups) and the service seems very reliable.
With my Javascript turned off I don't even see the pop-up ads that can be such a PITA when browsing Yahoo's properties.
Yahoo may be far from perfect but it's a whole lot better than Hotmail that's an absolute undeniable fact.
Think about this for a moment -- on the one hand we have Sony (and other recording companies) telling us that we shouldn't be copying music and burning CDRs.
On the other hand, Sony are more than happy to take our money when we buy one of their CDR/RW drives, their CDR/RW media and their various audio recording products.
Should they sue themselves under the DMCA I wonder?
Or are they just so stupid that they're hoping nobody will notice this crazy situation?
Over five years ago I wrote this column in which I offered Bill Gates a "billion dollar" idea to help him achieve his goal of taking over the Internet.
Perhaps the situation with RealNames is just a precursor to the implementation of this plan by Billy-boy?
I bet if they weren't so worried about anti-trust laws, Microsoft would have already done this.
Yes, it's true -- the very single-opt-in mailing lists that are used by spammer scan be used to fight back.
Spam Can Be Fun
As the founder and (from 1997-2000) editor of 7am.com, a "net-only" news service that has its content syndicated through a network of almost a quarter-million 3rd-party webpages, I adopted a different strategy to updating news stories.
Instead of rewriting an entire story as events unfolded I felt it was more "honest" to publish updates alongside the previous reports.
This produced stories which had the latest facts at the top and the initial report at the bottom -- with each update clearly delineated.
By using this method, readers were able to see for themselves whether we'd made mistakes and therefore judge the quality and timeliness of our reporting.
Clearly the meteoric growth of 7am.com vindicated (to at least some degree) this approach of "honest reporting."
Since I withdrew from all management and editorial involvement in 7am.com they appear to have changed their editorial policy to follow that of the other news publishers.
In an interview with Australia's Channel Nine this week, Elton John attributed the decline in CD sales not to piracy or the Internet -- but to the "crap" that the industry is trying to pass off as music.
It was refreshing to hear this sentiment echoed by an artist of such standing in the music industry.
Nice to know that there are still some recording artists that haven't sold out.