If wireless speakers and headphones become standard, I would hope bluetooth would be the technology of choice. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel.
Designated audio channel, +712kbs transfer rate, 100 meter range. Why not?
The nice rugged body and wireless abilities would lend itself nicely to war-driving, war-camping, war-hunting, and war-backpacking. The wirelss might be useful for comunicating between backpackers.
I just hope this thing is more rugged than my Garmin E-legend. The screen on mine gets all wonky every now and then, but it can be fixed with a 'technical' tap.
If any of you really want to see retro-hobbying at it's greatest, just do a search on Ebay for Nixie tubes.
Nixie tubes were createrd in the erra before LCD displays. Basicly it's a vacuum tube with metal numbers or letters layered one after each other. When a voltage is applied to the right pin, the number glows, much like a little neon light. They were often used in test equipment and a few computers. Hobbiest now use them to make clocks and other displays. It would be neat to use them as a status moniter on a linux server for that retro-look.:-)
Nintendo made it a point that thier system would only be a game console. It helps keeps hardware prices down (No DVD consortium to pay royalties to). They stuck to that attitude and lost sales, though I do have to agree with them on priciple.
If you're making a game consule, make a really good one. We don't all need the extra crap.
Of course if you really wanted you could by the Panasonic licenced version of the gamecube, called Q-something, that would play DVDs.
You had me convinced with your statement right up to the point where you said DC is superior for transmission.
Copper may be a great conductor, but miles and miles of this stuff makes for a high DC resistance. The AC resistance does not vary as greatly with the length of the copper line. That's why westinghouse won out in the 1800's and we use AC for distrabution today.
There's also the benifit that you can use transformers on an AC line to vary the voltage. You can't do a thing with a DC line to step-up or step-down the voltages without haveing an AC segment in between.
Maybe it's due to the fact that they're still having problems making the lives of these displays as long as they would like. I know They had issues with the blue and green colors dieing over time.
Making a bunch of "custom" disk that can only be played by a specific player can be done fairly cheaply.You just have to use the barcode scheme that's already used in the copy protection scheme of Gamecube disk.
Basicly a barcode is burned onto the leadin area of the disk after coping it is complete. You just burn the serial code of the player this disk will play on and the player is equiped to only play those disk with matching serial numbers.
Other vital information could be burned into this barcode such as the decryption key, or the start of the TOC because most players and all consumer DVD burners cannot read or reproduce this data. It renders the disk unreadable.
The name of this bill is no worse that the clean air act that allows for more pollution, the forest conservation act that allows for more logging, or the patriot act that takes away our freedoms.
It's more about the name than the content.... Welcome to the yuppy congress.
Classic Fallicy: One doesn't equal the other.
on
BSA IDC FUD
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Patent laws and anti-piracy laws have always be most strictly enforced by the countries that have the most to loose by not having them. Look at the industrial revolution for instance. The countries with the technical edge in one sector would confine the flow of information to keep thier edge. Any economic history major will recognize that the great Lowell and Slater Mills form the early U.S. used technology that was stolen from England (The Archwright Waterframe and Powerloom). This is no different with software. These less developed contried are trying to bridge the technology gap and piracy is the easiest and most economic way to do so. To say that restricting the flow of information into a country would boost it's IT sector is fally. It works the other way around until they are caught up. Then anti-piracy laws would make sence to keep this lead. Free trade? What's that?:-)
Anyone who's read 1984 can draw some direct correlations. "Those who control the past, control the future." I suspect it wont be too long before the government is asking us to burn all our old books in favor of their nice new "patriotic" copies.....
FPGA's are really a pretty neat piece of hardware. They're cheap easily constructed memory arrays. I've had experience using them in my digital design class at Georgia Tech. Basically you use a piece of software to plunk down whatever gates you want, the software compiles your schematic into a series of truth tables that get loaded onto the chip. There were few articles on slashdot in the past that really interested me. One was on the reprogramable "supercomputer desktop" and the other was using computers with FPGA's that could evolve to perform task faster. Actually the computer optimized the FGPA to use electromagnetic noise from other cells in the chip to perform the same task. It used the FPGA's in ways the current paradigm never intended. Imagine a computer that can evolve to work faster....
If someone is looking to tinker with some (F)PGA's I would recommend Altera's student kits and software. You can use the standard part schematics included or you can define your own using VHDL. Only $150 or $105 if you're a Georgia Tech student.
This is rather neat. We've been using PLDs, a different form of FPGAs, in our digital design class here at Georgia Tech. Basicly you can draw up a componet using VHDL or Verilog coding, download it to the PLD and the PLD will act as that componet. We've been using Altera's MAX+PLUS II software and boards to do our lab work. It would be really intresting to see a computer incorperate this into it's architechture. Imaging Q3 running off pure silicon. No more wizzing Hard drive. Now all we need is a VHDL coded version....
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If wireless speakers and headphones become standard, I would hope bluetooth would be the technology of choice. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel.
Designated audio channel, +712kbs transfer rate, 100 meter range. Why not?
The nice rugged body and wireless abilities would lend itself nicely to war-driving, war-camping, war-hunting, and war-backpacking. The wirelss might be useful for comunicating between backpackers.
I just hope this thing is more rugged than my Garmin E-legend. The screen on mine gets all wonky every now and then, but it can be fixed with a 'technical' tap.
If any of you really want to see retro-hobbying at it's greatest, just do a search on Ebay for Nixie tubes.
:-)
Nixie tubes were createrd in the erra before LCD displays. Basicly it's a vacuum tube with metal numbers or letters layered one after each other. When a voltage is applied to the right pin, the number glows, much like a little neon light. They were often used in test equipment and a few computers. Hobbiest now use them to make clocks and other displays. It would be neat to use them as a status moniter on a linux server for that retro-look.
Nintendo made it a point that thier system would only be a game console. It helps keeps hardware prices down (No DVD consortium to pay royalties to). They stuck to that attitude and lost sales, though I do have to agree with them on priciple.
If you're making a game consule, make a really good one. We don't all need the extra crap.
Of course if you really wanted you could by the Panasonic licenced version of the gamecube, called Q-something, that would play DVDs.
You had me convinced with your statement right up to the point where you said DC is superior for transmission.
Copper may be a great conductor, but miles and miles of this stuff makes for a high DC resistance. The AC resistance does not vary as greatly with the length of the copper line. That's why westinghouse won out in the 1800's and we use AC for distrabution today.
There's also the benifit that you can use transformers on an AC line to vary the voltage. You can't do a thing with a DC line to step-up or step-down the voltages without haveing an AC segment in between.
Maybe it's due to the fact that they're still having problems making the lives of these displays as long as they would like. I know They had issues with the blue and green colors dieing over time.
Making a bunch of "custom" disk that can only be played by a specific player can be done fairly cheaply.You just have to use the barcode scheme that's already used in the copy protection scheme of Gamecube disk.
Barcodes on the burst cutting area
Basicly a barcode is burned onto the leadin area of the disk after coping it is complete. You just burn the serial code of the player this disk will play on and the player is equiped to only play those disk with matching serial numbers.
Other vital information could be burned into this barcode such as the decryption key, or the start of the TOC because most players and all consumer DVD burners cannot read or reproduce this data. It renders the disk unreadable.
The name of this bill is no worse that the clean air act that allows for more pollution, the forest conservation act that allows for more logging, or the patriot act that takes away our freedoms.
It's more about the name than the content.... Welcome to the yuppy congress.
Patent laws and anti-piracy laws have always be most strictly enforced by the countries that have the most to loose by not having them. Look at the industrial revolution for instance. The countries with the technical edge in one sector would confine the flow of information to keep thier edge. Any economic history major will recognize that the great Lowell and Slater Mills form the early U.S. used technology that was stolen from England (The Archwright Waterframe and Powerloom). This is no different with software. These less developed contried are trying to bridge the technology gap and piracy is the easiest and most economic way to do so. To say that restricting the flow of information into a country would boost it's IT sector is fally. It works the other way around until they are caught up. Then anti-piracy laws would make sence to keep this lead. Free trade? What's that? :-)
Anyone who's read 1984 can draw some direct correlations. "Those who control the past, control the future." I suspect it wont be too long before the government is asking us to burn all our old books in favor of their nice new "patriotic" copies.....
If someone is looking to tinker with some (F)PGA's I would recommend Altera's student kits and software. You can use the standard part schematics included or you can define your own using VHDL. Only $150 or $105 if you're a Georgia Tech student.
Try working for Lucent or should I say soon to be Alcatel. :-)
This is rather neat. We've been using PLDs, a different form of FPGAs, in our digital design class here at Georgia Tech. Basicly you can draw up a componet using VHDL or Verilog coding, download it to the PLD and the PLD will act as that componet. We've been using Altera's MAX+PLUS II software and boards to do our lab work. It would be really intresting to see a computer incorperate this into it's architechture. Imaging Q3 running off pure silicon. No more wizzing Hard drive. Now all we need is a VHDL coded version....