...and I'm not sure why/. published this? The links are more are less free of any real substance. Timothy, some personal beef with RR?
What does not make sense to me is:
-if they want a port blocked, it would be blocked (no short functionality, no slowdown of transfers but a termination of transfers) - lots of people say kazaa and other p2p actually works for them, but browser http traffic on port 80 sucks big time - blocking the port would send people to just use another one - continous scanning with a script is possible, but in that case it makes no sense to piss the customer off, they could just regulate that port down some kbytes - from what the users say this more or less sounds like heavy load balancing problems, lack of bandwidth or routing problems. and some things the users describe sounds like an OS screaming to be reinstalled ("...rebooting seemed to solve the problems...")
sent from.de's fastest EuroDOCSIS cable modem network - 2MBit up/2Mbit down
I write this to remind you if your responsibility towards the the reader community. Please NEVER NEVER NEVER again post a link [to the slate article] that links further away to sites like dynamism.com. This is torture. I don't know how many divorces, maxed out credit cards and spontaneous Japan trips this will result in, but one thing is for sure... Checking out the slimtops and gadgets on that page got me shivering like a crack addict that has a rock the size of the Washington monument in clear view.
Thank you.
(gotta clear the line for airline reps to call me back...)
"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." -- Stephen Hawking
No further commentary. Make the connections to the article, resp the interview question about that button yourself.
...of that guy who put together a compilation of "1-minute silences". He just got the audio recordings of all the respective happenings (Lady Di memorial, whatever) and cut out the 1-minute silence period which by definition was not quite silent - you would hear distand police sirens, people couging, whatever.
Back when I read about it, I thought that it was way too ridiculoud to be topped. Well, this story got me.
Re:Is anyone else sceptical about this story?
on
Can You Hear Me Now?
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· Score: 2
Sorry, just got up and still tired - kinda confused radius with diameter (or viceverse?).
So, radius of a GSM cell is 37,8km, therefore handset range must be at least that, probably +5%.
Correct it for yourself, gotta shower and try to wake up...
Too bad you can't drink coffee and take a shower at the same time...
Re:Is anyone else sceptical about this story?
on
Can You Hear Me Now?
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· Score: 2
They have cellphone coverage at the top of a mountain?
No, they usually put the towers into the well-occupied areas of the valleys. But as a lot of people already pointed out, being high up at 12000+ feet you have a good view and clear line of sight to the towers. The normal radius for a gsm cell (dunno if the value is for 900/1800MHz or both) is 37,8km (23,5miles), so that is baically the max distance they can bridge. In theory the handset itself only needs that range to stay in touch at all times, but I suppose (depending on battery strength, antenna gain, atmospheric disturbances, whatever) the phones range might be a good 40-45km (24 to 28miles). This is the raw theory, in reality (or urbanity) most GSM cells are designed to be way smaller and generate a decent amount of overlap so handovers from one cell to another go well. That way the handsets don't have to beam away at full power. I think GSM usually send with 2 watts output power, but on the pretty old Siemens S4 GSM phone you could just extract the antenna and close a circuit which would boost the phone to 4 watts.
Also why would anyone take their phone climbing with them and not have any credit on it? [...] but it does seem stranmge
I am not very knowledgeable of the climbers scene, but I tend to think that most serious climbers would value someone who a) goes alone despite unclear weather conditions and b) brings booze instead of gear and c) won't carry a fallback security device (2nd phone or battery) and d) doesn't even check the functionality of his security device, well, they would probably value him "wannabe" or something.
I do some admin stuff for a 300 employee company in Hamburg, Germany. Ironically, at that location mp3's are welcome.
This is easily explained as follows - there was a general ban on radio receivers. First reason was that it might cause conflicts when people can't agree on a station or two individuals share an office, with one being a person that needs silence to concentrate. The other reason was the simple that fact, that any radio receiver and tv receiver has to be properly registered with out GEZ, an organisation funding the public radio/tv and therefore collecting bucks with anyone owning a receiver. So technically, the cheap receiver in the office might not be registered and therefore illegal. To prevent the general ban was in place.
Then people started to bring in discman's and headphones (the cd drives are config-locked in all boxes, so nothing to gain there). Some employees started bothering management for a solution. Instaling and registering radios for all offices was way out of question. The solution was setting up an old server, equipping it with some employee-sponsoreg large hard disk, and throw that sucker into the server room. Each user got a quote on those networked drives, just for mp3. So the employees could bring in their fav CD from home, have them ripped by the IT dep (cheap scipt utilising FreeCDDB, nearly no manual work) and then stream the files into their OS-supplied media players (although we installed Winamp as well to get rid of the exploit-ridden and memory hungry Redmond products). Sharing of mp3 between users is possible of course, or would you deny lending a co-worker your new CD? The pretty low costs for cheap loudspeakers (where they were not already installed) is a mere fragment of the cost radio receivers would have totaled.
Is that copyright infringement? I think not. And even if it was, it's in the users hands. We made it clear that they had to physically own the CD to have mp3 imported, and that we would not just copy a mp3-filled compact to their folders. So, these people own the CD, but can leave it at home because they have a copy at work. Same thing as having a CD in the living room shelf and car CD changer at the same time - technically it is a rip, legally it is your fair use.
disruption of 911[...]power outages[...]major cities[...]traffic lights at key intersections[...]virus in the computers at the NYSE
Even if all of this happened at the same time, to the full imaginable extent, I doubt that it would leave a number of casualties comparable to 9/11. And don't forget that they have to operate under cover. The WTC/Pentagon attack sure was properly planned and "well-executed" but on a scale from 1 to 10 Osama would probably give it just a 7,5 rating. Too many things went "wrong" (mind you, in the terrorists view of the things). Don't get me wrong, the WTC attack was horrible, but even this horror could have been optimized - hit lower to cut off the escape routes for more people. Hit harder to speed up collapse. In that case I suppose the causalties would have rocketed to a 5 digit number easily. Same for the plane that came down on the field instead of a target. Things never work out as planned, and that is what saved America further grief. So,for these cyber-attack(s) you mentioned - even executing them with surgical precision and astronomical timing would leave things open to failure (again, seen from the terrorists view). Therefore I am in doubt when you say these attacks could cause more damage/casualties. Remeber, Osama promised to escalate every attack in terms of casualties.
Had this occurred on New Year's eve, there would have been 150,000 or so in that park for a millennium celebration. Hehe... 150,000 Angelenos covered in shit on New Year's eve....
Well, whatever... Drunk as most of them would be, they would have trouble noticing the difference at all I guess. This is hardly a "terror attack" in my book. Sure, nasty for the individual. Certainly a heavy damage when it comes to laundry bills. Probably something that requires a lot of people to take antibiotics afterwards. But when it comes down to be crushed by a collapsing building or snorkeling in other people's shit... well, pass me some swimming shorts.
Hopefully this will be the first step towards several similar changes such as removing "In God We Trust" from our currency and taking bibles out of swearing in ceremonies.
And when that is done, get the Bible rated to a status that disabled kids to read it alone. There is a lot of creepy, threatening, immoral, intolerant and outright violent and bloody stuff in there, that's for sure. I don't even want to count the amount of contradictions to the current constitution.
I don't care how a priest defines or interprets passages along the lines of "eye for an eye,...". And they don't care how Quentin Tarantino explains the violence in his movies. It is there, anyone can make up his own mind, but it sure needs a rating to protect the youth.
I think we should start a petition to pull the bible and have it placed on the list of banned books. Just for the fun of it. I'd like to see the bible belt uproar.
Re:Not an Al Quaeda tactic
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Cyber-Attacks?
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· Score: 2
Look at their history of attacks: WTC, Khobar Towers, USS Cole, WTC again, Kenya embassy,... All aimed at directly attacking symbols of US hegemony, with big booms and many dead.
Absolutely right. And lets not forget that Osama "promised" a steady escalation of the attacks, in terms of casualties and damage. So far his actions follow this "promise"... And I can't really make up any scenario in which a solitary/distributed "cyber-only" attack would result in more casualties and damage than 9-11.
"...57,000 songs on an iPod or a terabyte on a laptop size hard drive!"
...or about 28% of my porno collection. : )
Good thing you mention... It is just way beyond me why anyone and their dog use the "xxx songs" phrase to measure storage volume... hell, I listen to psytrance tracks which usually play 10mins or more... and I try to stick to 192kbit or VBR mp3 files. So, how many songs can I store now? What if I want to store 3sec uncompressed PCM/WAV jingles?
>>>fastforward 3 years>>> Salesdrone: "...with this hatchback model you get an amazing boost of storage volume! It totals about 240pounds of marijuana or 11.5 standard M-16 transport crates..."
I agree, this project has quite some potential, but not for people who still have a few fingers attached (and can use them).
Most people will still be faster with any sort of keyboard. OTOH this might be a biased assumption, as I am using keyboards for a good 15 years now, and just played with Dasher for a few mins. Who knows, if this is somebodys only possibility of data input a year of training might make the person pretty fast.
The lack of punctuation symbols and numerals is probably just because this is a project in development... but I wonder how it would be implemented in v1.0.
Another thing... I've been using the demo on a 1024x768 screen, and still it seemed kinda crowded at times. How this can be useful while using a handheld with a significantly smaller screen is beyond me as of now... Anyone who tried the PocketPC version ready to throw in a few cents?
Anyone using GMX.NET as a primary email deserves EVERYTHING bound to possibly happen... Do you have a record of how many outages/security leaks these guys had in the past. If they get the transition correct on first try, I'll happily revise my opinion about those guys... And you won't have to check, the problem will materialize on its own - if it does. Depending on where you are you might be lucky and sleep over the troublesome period because of the time shift.
And FYI: I can still call GMX in the browser, but traceroutes fail after a dozen hops... Keep your finger crossed.
At least one ISP (Bahnhof) in Sweden has put in a bid for some of the european network infrastructure according to Computer Sweden. So perhaps parts of it wont go down just yet.
Add... AT&T [US, according to WSJ] Teles/Strato [.de, according to heise] 1&1 Webhosting (former Puretec) [.de] ...to the list of interested companies.
But I think it will not work out. Remember, suits are involved. Insolvency laws are complicated (esp. when it comes to a paneuropean company, there are at least three different "daughters" of KPNQwest going down around Europe). There have been quite some offers for the network (or at least parts of it) but so far obviouly nothing was good enough. And keep in mind that just 1 year or so ago most major european telco (and other potential buyers/investors) spent billions of euros they don't have to license a net that does not exist, in order to (maybe sometime) deliver services no one wants (yeah, talking UMTS here). I think most potential purchasers are kinda short on money.
According to varios news items on heise.de the debts (of KPNQwest) total around 2 billion euros by now, every day of further operation adds a mere million to that. Technically KPN was insolvent and done with on 5/31/02 at midnight.
Most parts of their nets still seem up and OK, and even if they flip the switch I suppose the "big internet outage of '02" won't take place. Most hosters and ISPs have already set up a fallback option. The insolvency is in the cooking pot for quite some time now, allowing preparation. Considering the fact that KPN did something 40%-50% of all european IP is scary, but when you realize that the other 50% have been properly delivered by other providers gives hope. Especially considering that most of their fibers ran on a very low capacity (one source says the utilisation of the KPNQ net is still a 1-digit percentage.
OK... I am a guy that has seen DOS, 4DOS, numerous Redmond products. I currently am stuck to W2K and I probably will be for quite some time as it is damn reliable. Linux was never a issue to me, mainly because I have to eat (and therefore earn bucks admin'ing Win OSes).
But what really fused my interest and admiration for linux was configuring a dedicated router on outdated hardware. There are quite some "linux router on a disk" projects out there, look for Coyote, FreeSCO or FLI4L (which is maintained by bunch of german guys).
Get your people to setup a working design for a linux router. The beauty of the project is that they can just make a boot disk, reboot the box they are working on and test it for real. The simplicity of the projects has quite some advantages - it takes out the "cluttering" some distros have (as in having/bin,/sbin,/usr/bin,/usr/local/bin,...) . The systems generated by (say) FLI4L are full linux systems, but without most of the fuss.
These systems are probably all you need to teach the basics of piping and redirection, the/var and/proc concept, shell scripting and automating/streamlining processes, blah blah. To me the FLI4L is the essence of linux - a small thing to get the job done, with no waste of resources. On the other hand, there is basically nothing you CANNOT do with FLI4L - install a SMB server and print servies, control LEDs hanging off the serial port, httpd, ftpd, telnetd, mount NTFS, you name it.
Excuse me for praising FLI4L here, other router distros are probably just as good, but FLI4L has the flexibility to astonish even people like me.
Re:what about the human side
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Hospital Robots
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· Score: 2
The technology and all is okay, but healing is not just medicines. Having a nurse to talk to and do the psychological healing is very important for a patient.
The psychological healing is usually bound to a psychological problem. And these wards are usually separate from the normal hospital service, for the very reasons you stated. These people need human touch, and I am sure they get it. The personnel working there is specially educated to cope with the patients problems in the right way, and I doubt they will be using the bots for anything else than administrative tasks (mail delivery,...), if at all.
The standard broken bone usually does not require intensive psychological care (or do you need a doctor to discuss the why and how of slipping on a banana peel?).
In a hospital its not just the medicines which cure you, it has to come from inside too. If Robots are used extensively it can create a sort of coldness which wont be really good, especially for patients who are under depression
I think depressed patients will be kept clear of these things. But the fear of coldness you mention is a double-edged sword. It might actually ADD to the hospital environment. There are tons of possibilities any hacker dreams of realizing. Imagine the bot in warm beautiful colors that take off some sterility from the environment. Imagine being able to pick a soundfile to play by the bot when he enters your room. Imagine doing a quick round of tetris. Imagine a video-conf system built in so relatives can get in "touch" for a minute or two from their workplaces while you get your medication. What the heck, imagine giving the bot a "live" soul, like some wheelchair-handicapped person being able to work in the hospital without actually moving around, but still socializing with the patients on the bot's tour on a regular basis. This will certainly have a positive psychological effect on patients AND the handicapped employee. All this is especially true if you think about the younger generation, especially kids in cancer wardens.
This is a powerful tool, especially in times of underpaid and overworked hospital employees. How much time can a nurse spare for chit-chat?
...of my long-gone phreaking and phrauding days. Here in.de it was still safe to bluebox and card calls because the entire was analog at that time and tracing had to be done by hand - certainly not something the german telco would do on a regular basis if only fraud was the crime. Well, i used to know some guy who was a security risk in that matter - before dialing someone or using a card with him in 3way, you had to kick him out or something - he could just recognize DTMF tones with his ears. Prolly not as sophisticated as a LED-to-bitstream hack but it still jumps up in my brain while reading this.
should do is rerelease a version of Morpheus that uses the technology that was state of the art when the engine was reversed by OpenFT. In exactly that period of time i got the best transfer rates, the fastest searches, the most results. That way they could take advantage of their protocol benefits (metadata and such), have an existing net to jump on and lure their followers into and a app that will whip Sharman all the wy to Tazmania and back.
Well... it was fun while it lasted. Let's see what's next. I am still waiting for the client that incorporates them all - OpenFT, gnutella, limewire, edonkey,...(list incomplete and some items probably redundant)
Re:so, you people want to build a gun eh?
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Homemade Gauss Gun
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· Score: 2
400km of thin copper wire is an awful lot. Try, "the width of northern Missouri".
The human lung consists of bubbles that will easily cover a soccer field when (theoretically) removed and expanded. Is your chest the size of a soccer field? No? You still have that awful lot of lung bubbles with you, pal.
Wall sockets are either 110V or 220V (sometimes listed as 120V/240V). Nowhere near five thousand. Not even in Europe, where they use much higher voltages, is a wall socket five thousand volts.
Again, so what? These voltages can be created from the proper current. Ever heard of that nifty peronsl protection devices that send a electrical shock into the person assaulted? They're in the range of 10s of thousands volts. Yet they work in the US where there are no power outlets with these properties. There's even more surprise to it - they can operate off a 9V block battery. Generating a voltage of a few thousand is probably an easy project for someone in the physics field (which I am not, I just aenjoy a broad general knowledge).
With a muzzle velocity of 2000m/s and a muzzle of only 3m, you can be damn sure that the payload would shatter and deform under the hundreds of thousands of G-forces.
Weird. I remember sending a few grams of lead through a much shorter barrel (like 1 m) at speeds around 750 to 900 meters/s without shattering either the muzzle/barrel or the projectile (the projectile usually got shattered after hitting the targets). This technique is one known to man for decades and has been steadily refined to what it today. You may have guessed it, i Am talking abour assault rifles (figures are for the german G3 rifle, while other rifle, esp sniper rifles can reach higher muzzle velocitys...)
There would also be liquified metal (from the payload) spraying everywhere, setting fires.
Well, if this was ture, we certainly would have a military version of this thing. Liquid metal spraying everywhere and setting fires is a militarists wet dream. I am sure the payload would get quite hot and uncomfy to stop with your hand, but i think it would stay solid. The impact might lead to a rise in temperature throughout the projectile because molecular friction will jump to the max for a fraction of a second, but what the heck - even if it was cold it would be deformed by then.
Slashdot Mirror
...and I'm not sure why /. published this? The links are more are less free of any real substance. Timothy, some personal beef with RR?
.de's fastest EuroDOCSIS cable modem network - 2MBit up/2Mbit down
What does not make sense to me is:
-if they want a port blocked, it would be blocked (no short functionality, no slowdown of transfers but a termination of transfers)
- lots of people say kazaa and other p2p actually works for them, but browser http traffic on port 80 sucks big time
- blocking the port would send people to just use another one - continous scanning with a script is possible, but in that case it makes no sense to piss the customer off, they could just regulate that port down some kbytes
- from what the users say this more or less sounds like heavy load balancing problems, lack of bandwidth or routing problems. and some things the users describe sounds like an OS screaming to be reinstalled ("...rebooting seemed to solve the problems...")
sent from
You meant to say "the whole continent", right? Even without roaming, the whole country (of say, UK or Germany) is your zone.
I write this to remind you if your responsibility towards the the reader community. Please NEVER NEVER NEVER again post a link [to the slate article] that links further away to sites like dynamism.com. This is torture. I don't know how many divorces, maxed out credit cards and spontaneous Japan trips this will result in, but one thing is for sure... Checking out the slimtops and gadgets on that page got me shivering like a crack addict that has a rock the size of the Washington monument in clear view.
Thank you.
(gotta clear the line for airline reps to call me back...)
"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image."
-- Stephen Hawking
No further commentary. Make the connections to the article, resp the interview question about that button yourself.
...of that guy who put together a compilation of "1-minute silences". He just got the audio recordings of all the respective happenings (Lady Di memorial, whatever) and cut out the 1-minute silence period which by definition was not quite silent - you would hear distand police sirens, people couging, whatever.
Back when I read about it, I thought that it was way too ridiculoud to be topped. Well, this story got me.
Sorry, just got up and still tired - kinda confused radius with diameter (or viceverse?).
So, radius of a GSM cell is 37,8km, therefore handset range must be at least that, probably +5%.
Correct it for yourself, gotta shower and try to wake up...
Too bad you can't drink coffee and take a shower at the same time...
No, they usually put the towers into the well-occupied areas of the valleys. But as a lot of people already pointed out, being high up at 12000+ feet you have a good view and clear line of sight to the towers. The normal radius for a gsm cell (dunno if the value is for 900/1800MHz or both) is 37,8km (23,5miles), so that is baically the max distance they can bridge. In theory the handset itself only needs that range to stay in touch at all times, but I suppose (depending on battery strength, antenna gain, atmospheric disturbances, whatever) the phones range might be a good 40-45km (24 to 28miles). This is the raw theory, in reality (or urbanity) most GSM cells are designed to be way smaller and generate a decent amount of overlap so handovers from one cell to another go well. That way the handsets don't have to beam away at full power. I think GSM usually send with 2 watts output power, but on the pretty old Siemens S4 GSM phone you could just extract the antenna and close a circuit which would boost the phone to 4 watts.
I am not very knowledgeable of the climbers scene, but I tend to think that most serious climbers would value someone who a) goes alone despite unclear weather conditions and b) brings booze instead of gear and c) won't carry a fallback security device (2nd phone or battery) and d) doesn't even check the functionality of his security device, well, they would probably value him "wannabe" or something.
I do some admin stuff for a 300 employee company in Hamburg, Germany. Ironically, at that location mp3's are welcome.
This is easily explained as follows - there was a general ban on radio receivers. First reason was that it might cause conflicts when people can't agree on a station or two individuals share an office, with one being a person that needs silence to concentrate. The other reason was the simple that fact, that any radio receiver and tv receiver has to be properly registered with out GEZ, an organisation funding the public radio/tv and therefore collecting bucks with anyone owning a receiver. So technically, the cheap receiver in the office might not be registered and therefore illegal. To prevent the general ban was in place.
Then people started to bring in discman's and headphones (the cd drives are config-locked in all boxes, so nothing to gain there). Some employees started bothering management for a solution. Instaling and registering radios for all offices was way out of question. The solution was setting up an old server, equipping it with some employee-sponsoreg large hard disk, and throw that sucker into the server room. Each user got a quote on those networked drives, just for mp3. So the employees could bring in their fav CD from home, have them ripped by the IT dep (cheap scipt utilising FreeCDDB, nearly no manual work) and then stream the files into their OS-supplied media players (although we installed Winamp as well to get rid of the exploit-ridden and memory hungry Redmond products). Sharing of mp3 between users is possible of course, or would you deny lending a co-worker your new CD? The pretty low costs for cheap loudspeakers (where they were not already installed) is a mere fragment of the cost radio receivers would have totaled.
Is that copyright infringement? I think not. And even if it was, it's in the users hands. We made it clear that they had to physically own the CD to have mp3 imported, and that we would not just copy a mp3-filled compact to their folders. So, these people own the CD, but can leave it at home because they have a copy at work. Same thing as having a CD in the living room shelf and car CD changer at the same time - technically it is a rip, legally it is your fair use.
Even if all of this happened at the same time, to the full imaginable extent, I doubt that it would leave a number of casualties comparable to 9/11. And don't forget that they have to operate under cover. The WTC/Pentagon attack sure was properly planned and "well-executed" but on a scale from 1 to 10 Osama would probably give it just a 7,5 rating. Too many things went "wrong" (mind you, in the terrorists view of the things). Don't get me wrong, the WTC attack was horrible, but even this horror could have been optimized - hit lower to cut off the escape routes for more people. Hit harder to speed up collapse. In that case I suppose the causalties would have rocketed to a 5 digit number easily. Same for the plane that came down on the field instead of a target. Things never work out as planned, and that is what saved America further grief. So,for these cyber-attack(s) you mentioned - even executing them with surgical precision and astronomical timing would leave things open to failure (again, seen from the terrorists view). Therefore I am in doubt when you say these attacks could cause more damage/casualties. Remeber, Osama promised to escalate every attack in terms of casualties.
Well, whatever... Drunk as most of them would be, they would have trouble noticing the difference at all I guess. This is hardly a "terror attack" in my book. Sure, nasty for the individual. Certainly a heavy damage when it comes to laundry bills. Probably something that requires a lot of people to take antibiotics afterwards. But when it comes down to be crushed by a collapsing building or snorkeling in other people's shit... well, pass me some swimming shorts.
And when that is done, get the Bible rated to a status that disabled kids to read it alone. There is a lot of creepy, threatening, immoral, intolerant and outright violent and bloody stuff in there, that's for sure. I don't even want to count the amount of contradictions to the current constitution.
I don't care how a priest defines or interprets passages along the lines of "eye for an eye,...". And they don't care how Quentin Tarantino explains the violence in his movies. It is there, anyone can make up his own mind, but it sure needs a rating to protect the youth.
I think we should start a petition to pull the bible and have it placed on the list of banned books. Just for the fun of it. I'd like to see the bible belt uproar.
Absolutely right. And lets not forget that Osama "promised" a steady escalation of the attacks, in terms of casualties and damage. So far his actions follow this "promise"... And I can't really make up any scenario in which a solitary/distributed "cyber-only" attack would result in more casualties and damage than 9-11.
Can you?
...with liberty and justice for all those who can pay for it...
Good thing you mention... It is just way beyond me why anyone and their dog use the "xxx songs" phrase to measure storage volume... hell, I listen to psytrance tracks which usually play 10mins or more... and I try to stick to 192kbit or VBR mp3 files. So, how many songs can I store now? What if I want to store 3sec uncompressed PCM/WAV jingles?
>>>fastforward 3 years>>>
Salesdrone: "...with this hatchback model you get an amazing boost of storage volume! It totals about 240pounds of marijuana or 11.5 standard M-16 transport crates..."
hmmmm...
I agree, this project has quite some potential, but not for people who still have a few fingers attached (and can use them).
Most people will still be faster with any sort of keyboard. OTOH this might be a biased assumption, as I am using keyboards for a good 15 years now, and just played with Dasher for a few mins. Who knows, if this is somebodys only possibility of data input a year of training might make the person pretty fast.
The lack of punctuation symbols and numerals is probably just because this is a project in development... but I wonder how it would be implemented in v1.0.
Another thing... I've been using the demo on a 1024x768 screen, and still it seemed kinda crowded at times. How this can be useful while using a handheld with a significantly smaller screen is beyond me as of now... Anyone who tried the PocketPC version ready to throw in a few cents?
must....resist...urge...to....post....flame...grng llxs....
Aw, what the heck, it's only karma.
Anyone using GMX.NET as a primary email deserves EVERYTHING bound to possibly happen... Do you have a record of how many outages/security leaks these guys had in the past. If they get the transition correct on first try, I'll happily revise my opinion about those guys... And you won't have to check, the problem will materialize on its own - if it does. Depending on where you are you might be lucky and sleep over the troublesome period because of the time shift.
And FYI: I can still call GMX in the browser, but traceroutes fail after a dozen hops... Keep your finger crossed.
Add...
AT&T [US, according to WSJ]
Teles/Strato [.de, according to heise]
1&1 Webhosting (former Puretec) [.de]
...to the list of interested companies.
But I think it will not work out. Remember, suits are involved. Insolvency laws are complicated (esp. when it comes to a paneuropean company, there are at least three different "daughters" of KPNQwest going down around Europe). There have been quite some offers for the network (or at least parts of it) but so far obviouly nothing was good enough. And keep in mind that just 1 year or so ago most major european telco (and other potential buyers/investors) spent billions of euros they don't have to license a net that does not exist, in order to (maybe sometime) deliver services no one wants (yeah, talking UMTS here). I think most potential purchasers are kinda short on money.
According to varios news items on heise.de the debts (of KPNQwest) total around 2 billion euros by now, every day of further operation adds a mere million to that. Technically KPN was insolvent and done with on 5/31/02 at midnight.
Most parts of their nets still seem up and OK, and even if they flip the switch I suppose the "big internet outage of '02" won't take place. Most hosters and ISPs have already set up a fallback option. The insolvency is in the cooking pot for quite some time now, allowing preparation. Considering the fact that KPN did something 40%-50% of all european IP is scary, but when you realize that the other 50% have been properly delivered by other providers gives hope. Especially considering that most of their fibers ran on a very low capacity (one source says the utilisation of the KPNQ net is still a 1-digit percentage.
OK... I am a guy that has seen DOS, 4DOS, numerous Redmond products. I currently am stuck to W2K and I probably will be for quite some time as it is damn reliable. Linux was never a issue to me, mainly because I have to eat (and therefore earn bucks admin'ing Win OSes).
/bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, ...) . The systems generated by (say) FLI4L are full linux systems, but without most of the fuss.
/var and /proc concept, shell scripting and automating/streamlining processes, blah blah. To me the FLI4L is the essence of linux - a small thing to get the job done, with no waste of resources. On the other hand, there is basically nothing you CANNOT do with FLI4L - install a SMB server and print servies, control LEDs hanging off the serial port, httpd, ftpd, telnetd, mount NTFS, you name it.
But what really fused my interest and admiration for linux was configuring a dedicated router on outdated hardware. There are quite some "linux router on a disk" projects out there, look for Coyote, FreeSCO or FLI4L (which is maintained by bunch of german guys).
Get your people to setup a working design for a linux router. The beauty of the project is that they can just make a boot disk, reboot the box they are working on and test it for real. The simplicity of the projects has quite some advantages - it takes out the "cluttering" some distros have (as in having
These systems are probably all you need to teach the basics of piping and redirection, the
Excuse me for praising FLI4L here, other router distros are probably just as good, but FLI4L has the flexibility to astonish even people like me.
The psychological healing is usually bound to a psychological problem. And these wards are usually separate from the normal hospital service, for the very reasons you stated. These people need human touch, and I am sure they get it. The personnel working there is specially educated to cope with the patients problems in the right way, and I doubt they will be using the bots for anything else than administrative tasks (mail delivery,
The standard broken bone usually does not require intensive psychological care (or do you need a doctor to discuss the why and how of slipping on a banana peel?).
I think depressed patients will be kept clear of these things. But the fear of coldness you mention is a double-edged sword. It might actually ADD to the hospital environment. There are tons of possibilities any hacker dreams of realizing. Imagine the bot in warm beautiful colors that take off some sterility from the environment. Imagine being able to pick a soundfile to play by the bot when he enters your room. Imagine doing a quick round of tetris. Imagine a video-conf system built in so relatives can get in "touch" for a minute or two from their workplaces while you get your medication. What the heck, imagine giving the bot a "live" soul, like some wheelchair-handicapped person being able to work in the hospital without actually moving around, but still socializing with the patients on the bot's tour on a regular basis. This will certainly have a positive psychological effect on patients AND the handicapped employee. All this is especially true if you think about the younger generation, especially kids in cancer wardens.
This is a powerful tool, especially in times of underpaid and overworked hospital employees. How much time can a nurse spare for chit-chat?
...but the swiss army dismissed their well-kept pigeons and the soldiers taking care of them just three years ago...
If they would kick out their bicyclist corps sometime soon, you might actually call them an army sometine soon.
...of my long-gone phreaking and phrauding days. Here in .de it was still safe to bluebox and card calls because the entire was analog at that time and tracing had to be done by hand - certainly not something the german telco would do on a regular basis if only fraud was the crime. Well, i used to know some guy who was a security risk in that matter - before dialing someone or using a card with him in 3way, you had to kick him out or something - he could just recognize DTMF tones with his ears. Prolly not as sophisticated as a LED-to-bitstream hack but it still jumps up in my brain while reading this.
You go and tell that to someone in Florida. They did, and it sure didn't help.
...is barely readable. The language and scripting style require expertise to comprehend. It's not like USA today. The comparison is kinda lame.
should do is rerelease a version of Morpheus that uses the technology that was state of the art when the engine was reversed by OpenFT. In exactly that period of time i got the best transfer rates, the fastest searches, the most results. That way they could take advantage of their protocol benefits (metadata and such), have an existing net to jump on and lure their followers into and a app that will whip Sharman all the wy to Tazmania and back.
...(list incomplete and some items probably redundant)
Well... it was fun while it lasted. Let's see what's next. I am still waiting for the client that incorporates them all - OpenFT, gnutella, limewire, edonkey,
The human lung consists of bubbles that will easily cover a soccer field when (theoretically) removed and expanded. Is your chest the size of a soccer field? No? You still have that awful lot of lung bubbles with you, pal.
Again, so what? These voltages can be created from the proper current. Ever heard of that nifty peronsl protection devices that send a electrical shock into the person assaulted? They're in the range of 10s of thousands volts. Yet they work in the US where there are no power outlets with these properties. There's even more surprise to it - they can operate off a 9V block battery. Generating a voltage of a few thousand is probably an easy project for someone in the physics field (which I am not, I just aenjoy a broad general knowledge).
Weird. I remember sending a few grams of lead through a much shorter barrel (like 1 m) at speeds around 750 to 900 meters/s without shattering either the muzzle/barrel or the projectile (the projectile usually got shattered after hitting the targets). This technique is one known to man for decades and has been steadily refined to what it today. You may have guessed it, i Am talking abour assault rifles (figures are for the german G3 rifle, while other rifle, esp sniper rifles can reach higher muzzle velocitys...)
Well, if this was ture, we certainly would have a military version of this thing. Liquid metal spraying everywhere and setting fires is a militarists wet dream. I am sure the payload would get quite hot and uncomfy to stop with your hand, but i think it would stay solid. The impact might lead to a rise in temperature throughout the projectile because molecular friction will jump to the max for a fraction of a second, but what the heck - even if it was cold it would be deformed by then.