I've seen something like you described advertised on german TV. It was an add-on for Playstation games (and will probably be available for other consoles).
It consisted basically of the platform you described (it came in form of a "mat" with sensors, so it could be easily rolled together for storage). It also had the different field for going standing still/going forward/backing up/left/right. Additional to that were two poles standing upright on the front part of the mat. These poles sported some IR sensors.
The purpose of this thingamajig (retailing for about 200Marks, which comes down to $90) was adding reality to "beat-em-up" games like Mortal Combat. Using the map fields you could go forwards and backwards. The IR sensors on the poles would detect your fist/arm "punching". Also it could distinguish between arm and leg usage (probably by using a dedicated sensor circuit for each foot). Also high and low kicks could be done, and a slight jump (with you just leaving the floor for some inches) onto the fore/aft pads would trigger a jump in the game.
I am sure this thing is available in the US as well.
The research done in racing does in fact make it to the road. Anti-lock brakes, traction control, and 'crush zones' all come from high-tech racing. Aerodynamics as well, which directly impact fuel effciency.
Agreed and point taken. What I am saying is: limit the gasonline usage even more. What will we see? Shorter races? Or again even better efficiency with a race getting even more kicks because a "technology race" is being held at the same time the drivers are battling for the lead position.
The up-and-down combustion engine is being used for lots of decades. What could be won with rotary engines? What can be archieved by restricting cars to 1liter-engines with twin-turbos. And what could be won (in terms of environment preservation) once these techniques make it to the showroom?
If you want progress, go for old-fashioned horizontal drag-racing using electrical engines and suitable batteries. This might have an impact on technology advances in a sector that might essentially help save the planet by using different resources.
.
Great! So how much extra coal or oil should we burn in power stations to generate the electricity to power these things?
Conventional forms of electic transport just move the pollution from one place to another..
Have you ever seen a solar-powered calculator? A wind-prop built up in offshore regions generating power for those living on the coast?
Just because America ignores the technology, it does not mean it is not there.
The entire point: gas(online) is still WAY too cheap in the United States. After all we know it might be gone in 30-50 years. So we'd better start getting into alternatives. Or we might end up fabriating very good walking shoes in the near future.
Of course you might say: These devices suck (solar and wind-energy), they have such a low efficiency. Well, take a look at convential combustion engines from 60 years ago. They sucked in terms of efficiency as well. Research made them better. Research can still make them better, but there are alternatives that deserve research just as much.
And i tend to think that a electrical engine has a higher power yield. Remember when you turn the ignition on your car (any car) next time: 75% of all the energy your gasoline/diesel can generate at all is WASTED (converted) into energies that don't serve forward motion: vibration, noise, engine heatup, friction...
Get more people flying rockets - even if it's in the atmosphere at subsonic speeds - and you've taken the first crucial step.
The first crucial step to what ? More mindless resource burning ?
When I hear "vertical drag racing" I tend to choke. What exactly is good in that ?
If you want progress, go for old-fashioned horizontal drag-racing using electrical engines and suitable batteries. This might have an impact on technology advances in a sector that might essentially help save the planet by using different resources.
If you want more progress on old-fashioned combustion engines create a car-racing formula that essentially bases on getting the race done with a limited amount of fuel. This might boost engine efficiency.
Nobody is doing this right now. At least not to a commercially usable level. It just not where the money lurks.
Disclaimer: I am not a tree-hugger. I just think we don't need Formula1 teams with 800hp cars, that talk about "doing research for the cars on the road in 10 years". We don't need developing drag race technology that will never see any commercial use. And we certainly don't need vertical drag racing, as it is just old technology in the hands of the masses.
May such magnificient machines never again be used for such awful, awful purpose.
Maybe i'm just being overtired or too ironic, or have karma to burn, but I hope sure hope they won't change the magnificient ones with the small ones dropped small nukes in downtown Manhattan.
Note that the automotive industry has struggled to make batteries and fuel cells crash-safe. When airlines panic about nail clippers, they're likely to reject anyone boarding a plane with a gas-powered device.
Well, what is the current situation on other gas-or gasoline powered devices? Can you take your BIC disposable lighter onboard? What about Zippos? The final product will most likely be an anonymous black block with wires... The risk of this being mistaken for a bomb is higher than having ir barred from flight because it contains methane, methinks.
After all, you are allowed to take gameboys and laptops onboard. Ever wondered what hazardous and noxious chemical reactions are going on inside such a rechargable battery?
the radiation of my cell phone and a cell full of methane in the same piece of hardware. I'd start looking at yesterday's story on body powered batteries before I started walking around with methane on my belt. So what kind of emissions do these things put out?
Oxygen, heat and electricity. Nothing really hazardous in terms of output...
Well... maybe you don't own a car? Maybe you only go with cabs, which have ride times that don't allow full charge? Maybe you are taking part in the Rallye Paris-Dakar and your diesel-generator failed? Maybe you're CNN staff in a rural country where power outlets are rare... Or you travela alot and hate to fiddle with all these different standards for power outlets and voltages? Maybe you just want the UNIVERSAL charger for all your stuff...
Motorola researchers announced Tuesday that they have successfully demonstrated a methane gas-powered fuel cell, which can provide enough juice between chargings for a month of cell phone calls.
The way i understand it, it works as follows:
1. You buy the fuel cell powerplant which is slightly smaller than a standard battery
2. You keep using you phone as usual - recharging the normal battery when it goes flat.
3. If you are out in the fields with no electricity or in a hotel without your charger, you hook up the phone with the flat battery to the fuelcell to recharge the normal battery
4. After charging the devices are disconnected from each other and you keep using your phone like you are used to...
I kinda like the idea, but hope for flexibility in the fuelcell device. It sure would kick ass if i not only could "refuel" my cell but also my PDA, MP2 player or whatever gizmo is currently hungry.
The more a file is transported around Freenet, the more copies are available. Popularity tends to make a file easier to get instead of harder.
This is true for Morpheus downloads as well. But not every user (read: freeloader/leech) will set up their client to allow downloads. Some will fake their T1 line down to a 56k-line in the user setup and block traffic to very low limits.
This has been a problem with napster, this will be a problem with Kazaa/Morpheus. This will be effectively cured by either BBS or FTP systems with ratio.
A wise man once said "Freenet views lawyers as damn apes and routes around them."
A wise man just thought, that the fastest way to bring down something like FreeNet might be drowning it in P2P file sharing traffic - all that pron, music, dvd rips can really do hell to infrastructures.
Actually this is just a wild guess, as I am not totally sure about the network architecture of FreeNet. But the danger might be imminent.
Why would they have to break any encryption? They just have to create an account, log on, search for songs they own the rights to, download them from people that don't have the rights to distribute them, and bam.. They have all the evidence they need, and they got it legit.
Ten years back, when i was 0dAY-War3z junkie, most BBS used "disclaimers" such as "If you are affiliated with law enforcement and such, and don't state that in your account, yoùr are not allowed in this system." (And if person stated to be in law enforcement he would be deleted).
Were/are these means actually effective in a legal sense? If I ran a system like this, could evidence gathered by breaking the rules of MY User License Agreement be used in court? Or was that just a cover-your-ass vaccine sysops used to get some good night sleep at all?
Just wondering who is going to sign the ever-present forms then. Look at www.slashdot.org/articles/01/03/19/2049249.shtml and tell me the bureaucrats will let them get away with just a single form today.
WMA? So what? This is even better than ripping the "un-rippable" tracks through a cinch cable and a second machine.
This will allow to playback the WMA files with WinAmp (WA has an WMA input plugin). Also, WinAmp sports an "direct hard disk" output, effectively saving the.WAV data that would have sent to the audio mixer to disk. You end up with a old-school WAV file that can be easily encoded.
From http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/reuters_wir e/1530436l.htm
The standard model costs about 48,000 yen ($400) while the fancier video model costs about 68,000 yen ($570). The data model can be had for about 28,000 yen ($235).
IANAL, but I doubt that the drexel furniture company owns a trademark on 'Drexel' as the name applies to education. The trademark only covers what they make it cover, i.e. furniture.
So i could finally build my long-dream McDonalds automobile and not face trouble with the fast-food chain accidently posing under the same name ?
For those with a Palm Pilot, OmniRemote [pacificneotek.com] is an excellent universal remote application. It makes Palm IIs with the 2MB upgrade card useful again.
Well, using a palm as a remote is the same as getting up and pushing the button with your live fingers. The range of that cute IR transmitter is fine for beaming vCards but don't expect it to reach through your entire living room. Fresh batteries might help, but what really is needed here is a soldering-iron-h4x0r punching in a more powerful IR bulb.
What I am crying for actually is a larger display. I know it is supposed to be palm compatible with its 160x160 square screen.
But what keeps them away from enlarging the display into the "graffiti" write zone? This gives roughly 1/3 more display area, for easier data display and email reading and and and...
Admitted, it would confuse the normal Palm user, but how hard is it to program a "softkeyboard" which just displays the graffiti zone at users will? And how hard is it to grab written graffiti from all over the screen? The answer to both: "not very".
The softkeyboard ist just a matter of display in the lower display area and the all-screen graffiti zone is something seen on a lot of palm today that run ScreenWrite (shareware hack).
Going by the fact that Bush has ordered flags to be flown at half-mast until the 21st, I suspect the first attacks will start early on the 21st
I just checked the CIA WFB 2000 on Afghanistan. Gives a pretty bad image of the country, but what the heck. I figured it would be neat to kick back on them (in whatever way conceivable) on a national holiday. Unfortunately there are only three of these days and all have already passed for this year.
But taking a look at their average lifespan (around 46 years) and the high rate of infant deaths it might just be easier to lock down all borders and wait till they have perished.
Back on a more serious track, please check out the fact book link below. Knowledge is power, as we all know. And knowing under what circumstances these people are living might be the first to resolving the situation. Terror stems from hate and hate is a good friend of poverty.
Afghanistan has an literacy rate of just 35%. Roundabout 100.000 radio receivers and about the same amount of TV sets in the ENTIRE country. Now, this is a people to be led into misbeliefs easily...
Some of the german readers will have heard a bell chiming when reading this name.
For those unknowing: Kimble is a "hacker" (as in script kiddie) grown up. He started out on AMIGA warez boards, turning SysOps in to the german police, showing off "phreak" tricks like blueboxing on public tv and stuff like that. He does actually not have a lot of friends in the computer scene. You can read about his latest scoops by searching google for "Kim Schmitz" and or "dataprotect münchen [munich]".
This guy is a basic annoyance in the bit-literate german world. He uses fake press releases to push up dying dotcoms (like letsbuyit.com) for a last round of financing and stuff like this. Almost always immoral and sometimes also right-out illegal. Also a guy to pop up everywhere you put a TV cam and/or a microphone.
Now, what does this man have to do with the events in New York? Easy. HE DOES NOT EVEN HAVE THE DIGNITY TO LET THE NYC CASUALTIES REST IN PEACE.
Just a few hours ago, he posted a modded FBI wanted poster to his website (kimble.org) which claims (kimble.org/mostwanted.html) that he will pay $10million for clues leading to the arrest of Osama Bin Laden. THAT IS $10 MILLION HE DOES NOT HAVE. THIS IS A DAMN BIG, INSANE AND SHAMELESS MEDIA STUNT. EGO-WHORING. This man is always first to shape his profile in the face of the media.
BUT FOR MY TASTE HE HAS GONE WAAAAAAY TOO FAR NOW. I am insanely mad and furious. An hour ago i disliked him a lot. Now I hate him enough to dislocate a shoulder or two.
I am sorry I am posting this mad rambling here - it just makes me crazy to have this damn web page up on his server, serving the single purpose of a media stunt in the face of literally THOUSANDS of people dead or missing.
I hope this will be the last madman surfing this wave, and I hope for you that no one in the States is stupid enough for that. I can't tell you how mad I am.
If you feel like reading up on this guy, use google as described above. Or directly email reward@kimble.org and tell him what you think of this. This is not a call to mailbombs or DoS attacks on his server.
The entire bunch of slashdot readers adressing him with their opinion and concerns is WAAAY more helpful.
Go ahead, mod me down. I don't care about the karma. I care to get this off my mind.
And don't forget that all that was built 28 years ago. Materials weaken and the bombings that occured years earlier are thought to have done soem structural damages not heavy enough for making the building fall. But they might have added up to it when the planes came in and set the top level of structure on fire.
Also, some people report to have heard load bangs before the towers collapsed. Is this fact being investigated/denied or something ? Maybe there were some additional car bombs in there just to make sure.
And maybe they even tried to get down more. Seeing a picture of NY I saw that the Empire State building is just a few miles off the WTC. What about another jumbo going in there?!
The RAF (or "red army fraction" was active almost exclusively in Germany. It is suspected that they got some basic training in the near east, but that was almost 20 years ago. These days about nothing happens for which they can be held responsible.
Secondly, EVERY assault or bombing by the RAF was followed by a letter of confession to force their aims and goals (like freeing imprisoned member and such).
Nowadays the RAF is presumed dead by german authorities.
The leader of the Northern Alliance is belived to have been killed over the weekend in an ambush. He was charismatic and able hold various factions together. Needless to say, his troops (which control 5% of Afghanistan) are pretty upset.
Maybe they got a round of funding from the CIA. Wouldn't be the first time for America to support and help out "contra"-like groups. (Remember Nicaragua)
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen something like you described advertised on german TV. It was an add-on for Playstation games (and will probably be available for other consoles).
It consisted basically of the platform you described (it came in form of a "mat" with sensors, so it could be easily rolled together for storage). It also had the different field for going standing still/going forward/backing up/left/right. Additional to that were two poles standing upright on the front part of the mat. These poles sported some IR sensors.
The purpose of this thingamajig (retailing for about 200Marks, which comes down to $90) was adding reality to "beat-em-up" games like Mortal Combat. Using the map fields you could go forwards and backwards. The IR sensors on the poles would detect your fist/arm "punching". Also it could distinguish between arm and leg usage (probably by using a dedicated sensor circuit for each foot). Also high and low kicks could be done, and a slight jump (with you just leaving the floor for some inches) onto the fore/aft pads would trigger a jump in the game.
I am sure this thing is available in the US as well.
Agreed and point taken. What I am saying is: limit the gasonline usage even more. What will we see? Shorter races? Or again even better efficiency with a race getting even more kicks because a "technology race" is being held at the same time the drivers are battling for the lead position.
The up-and-down combustion engine is being used for lots of decades. What could be won with rotary engines? What can be archieved by restricting cars to 1liter-engines with twin-turbos. And what could be won (in terms of environment preservation) once these techniques make it to the showroom?
Have you ever seen a solar-powered calculator? A wind-prop built up in offshore regions generating power for those living on the coast?
Just because America ignores the technology, it does not mean it is not there.
The entire point: gas(online) is still WAY too cheap in the United States. After all we know it might be gone in 30-50 years. So we'd better start getting into alternatives. Or we might end up fabriating very good walking shoes in the near future.
Of course you might say: These devices suck (solar and wind-energy), they have such a low efficiency. Well, take a look at convential combustion engines from 60 years ago. They sucked in terms of efficiency as well. Research made them better. Research can still make them better, but there are alternatives that deserve research just as much.
And i tend to think that a electrical engine has a higher power yield. Remember when you turn the ignition on your car (any car) next time: 75% of all the energy your gasoline/diesel can generate at all is WASTED (converted) into energies that don't serve forward motion: vibration, noise, engine heatup, friction...
The first crucial step to what ? More mindless resource burning ?
When I hear "vertical drag racing" I tend to choke. What exactly is good in that ?
If you want progress, go for old-fashioned horizontal drag-racing using electrical engines and suitable batteries. This might have an impact on technology advances in a sector that might essentially help save the planet by using different resources.
If you want more progress on old-fashioned combustion engines create a car-racing formula that essentially bases on getting the race done with a limited amount of fuel. This might boost engine efficiency.
Nobody is doing this right now. At least not to a commercially usable level. It just not where the money lurks.
Disclaimer: I am not a tree-hugger. I just think we don't need Formula1 teams with 800hp cars, that talk about "doing research for the cars on the road in 10 years". We don't need developing drag race technology that will never see any commercial use. And we certainly don't need vertical drag racing, as it is just old technology in the hands of the masses.
Maybe i'm just being overtired or too ironic, or have karma to burn, but I hope sure hope they won't change the magnificient ones with the small ones dropped small nukes in downtown Manhattan.
Well, what is the current situation on other gas-or gasoline powered devices? Can you take your BIC disposable lighter onboard? What about Zippos? The final product will most likely be an anonymous black block with wires... The risk of this being mistaken for a bomb is higher than having ir barred from flight because it contains methane, methinks.
After all, you are allowed to take gameboys and laptops onboard. Ever wondered what hazardous and noxious chemical reactions are going on inside such a rechargable battery?
Oxygen, heat and electricity. Nothing really hazardous in terms of output...
The reaction produces, oxygen (no stink), heat (no stink) and electricity (no stink).
Well... maybe you don't own a car? Maybe you only go with cabs, which have ride times that don't allow full charge? Maybe you are taking part in the Rallye Paris-Dakar and your diesel-generator failed? Maybe you're CNN staff in a rural country where power outlets are rare... Or you travela alot and hate to fiddle with all these different standards for power outlets and voltages? Maybe you just want the UNIVERSAL charger for all your stuff...
I can see some useful applications for this.
The way i understand it, it works as follows:
1. You buy the fuel cell powerplant which is slightly smaller than a standard battery
2. You keep using you phone as usual - recharging the normal battery when it goes flat.
3. If you are out in the fields with no electricity or in a hotel without your charger, you hook up the phone with the flat battery to the fuelcell to recharge the normal battery
4. After charging the devices are disconnected from each other and you keep using your phone like you are used to...
I kinda like the idea, but hope for flexibility in the fuelcell device. It sure would kick ass if i not only could "refuel" my cell but also my PDA, MP2 player or whatever gizmo is currently hungry.
This is true for Morpheus downloads as well. But not every user (read: freeloader/leech) will set up their client to allow downloads. Some will fake their T1 line down to a 56k-line in the user setup and block traffic to very low limits.
This has been a problem with napster, this will be a problem with Kazaa/Morpheus. This will be effectively cured by either BBS or FTP systems with ratio.
A wise man just thought, that the fastest way to bring down something like FreeNet might be drowning it in P2P file sharing traffic - all that pron, music, dvd rips can really do hell to infrastructures.
Actually this is just a wild guess, as I am not totally sure about the network architecture of FreeNet. But the danger might be imminent.
Can someone more knowledgeable elaborate on this?
Ten years back, when i was 0dAY-War3z junkie, most BBS used "disclaimers" such as "If you are affiliated with law enforcement and such, and don't state that in your account, yoùr are not allowed in this system." (And if person stated to be in law enforcement he would be deleted).
Were/are these means actually effective in a legal sense? If I ran a system like this, could evidence gathered by breaking the rules of MY User License Agreement be used in court? Or was that just a cover-your-ass vaccine sysops used to get some good night sleep at all?
So it's going to be an unmanned mission.
Just wondering who is going to sign the ever-present forms then. Look at www.slashdot.org/articles/01/03/19/2049249.shtml and tell me the bureaucrats will let them get away with just a single form today.
I doubt it...
WMA? So what? This is even better than ripping the "un-rippable" tracks through a cinch cable and a second machine.
.WAV data that would have sent to the audio mixer to disk. You end up with a old-school WAV file that can be easily encoded.
This will allow to playback the WMA files with WinAmp (WA has an WMA input plugin). Also, WinAmp sports an "direct hard disk" output, effectively saving the
From http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/reuters_wir e/1530436l.htm
The standard model costs about 48,000 yen ($400) while the fancier video model costs about 68,000 yen ($570). The data model can be had for about 28,000 yen ($235).
So i could finally build my long-dream McDonalds automobile and not face trouble with the fast-food chain accidently posing under the same name ?
Well, using a palm as a remote is the same as getting up and pushing the button with your live fingers. The range of that cute IR transmitter is fine for beaming vCards but don't expect it to reach through your entire living room. Fresh batteries might help, but what really is needed here is a soldering-iron-h4x0r punching in a more powerful IR bulb.
Last time I checked, slashdotting a site wouldn't help.
...over and over again! I just don't get it.
What I am crying for actually is a larger display. I know it is supposed to be palm compatible with its 160x160 square screen.
But what keeps them away from enlarging the display into the "graffiti" write zone? This gives roughly 1/3 more display area, for easier data display and email reading and and and...
Admitted, it would confuse the normal Palm user, but how hard is it to program a "softkeyboard" which just displays the graffiti zone at users will? And how hard is it to grab written graffiti from all over the screen? The answer to both: "not very".
The softkeyboard ist just a matter of display in the lower display area and the all-screen graffiti zone is something seen on a lot of palm today that run ScreenWrite (shareware hack).
So?
I just checked the CIA WFB 2000 on Afghanistan. Gives a pretty bad image of the country, but what the heck. I figured it would be neat to kick back on them (in whatever way conceivable) on a national holiday. Unfortunately there are only three of these days and all have already passed for this year.
But taking a look at their average lifespan (around 46 years) and the high rate of infant deaths it might just be easier to lock down all borders and wait till they have perished.
Back on a more serious track, please check out the fact book link below. Knowledge is power, as we all know. And knowing under what circumstances these people are living might be the first to resolving the situation. Terror stems from hate and hate is a good friend of poverty.
Afghanistan has an literacy rate of just 35%. Roundabout 100.000 radio receivers and about the same amount of TV sets in the ENTIRE country. Now, this is a people to be led into misbeliefs easily...
Some of the german readers will have heard a bell chiming when reading this name.
For those unknowing: Kimble is a "hacker" (as in script kiddie) grown up. He started out on AMIGA warez boards, turning SysOps in to the german police, showing off "phreak" tricks like blueboxing on public tv and stuff like that. He does actually not have a lot of friends in the computer scene. You can read about his latest scoops by searching google for "Kim Schmitz" and or "dataprotect münchen [munich]".
This guy is a basic annoyance in the bit-literate german world. He uses fake press releases to push up dying dotcoms (like letsbuyit.com) for a last round of financing and stuff like this. Almost always immoral and sometimes also right-out illegal. Also a guy to pop up everywhere you put a TV cam and/or a microphone.
Now, what does this man have to do with the events in New York? Easy. HE DOES NOT EVEN HAVE THE DIGNITY TO LET THE NYC CASUALTIES REST IN PEACE.
Just a few hours ago, he posted a modded FBI wanted poster to his website (kimble.org) which claims (kimble.org/mostwanted.html) that he will pay $10million for clues leading to the arrest of Osama Bin Laden. THAT IS $10 MILLION HE DOES NOT HAVE. THIS IS A DAMN BIG, INSANE AND SHAMELESS MEDIA STUNT. EGO-WHORING. This man is always first to shape his profile in the face of the media.
BUT FOR MY TASTE HE HAS GONE WAAAAAAY TOO FAR NOW. I am insanely mad and furious. An hour ago i disliked him a lot. Now I hate him enough to dislocate a shoulder or two.
I am sorry I am posting this mad rambling here - it just makes me crazy to have this damn web page up on his server, serving the single purpose of a media stunt in the face of literally THOUSANDS of people dead or missing.
I hope this will be the last madman surfing this wave, and I hope for you that no one in the States is stupid enough for that. I can't tell you how mad I am.
If you feel like reading up on this guy, use google as described above. Or directly email reward@kimble.org and tell him what you think of this. This is not a call to mailbombs or DoS attacks on his server.
The entire bunch of slashdot readers adressing him with their opinion and concerns is WAAAY more helpful.
Go ahead, mod me down. I don't care about the karma. I care to get this off my mind.
And don't forget that all that was built 28 years ago. Materials weaken and the bombings that occured years earlier are thought to have done soem structural damages not heavy enough for making the building fall. But they might have added up to it when the planes came in and set the top level of structure on fire.
Also, some people report to have heard load bangs before the towers collapsed. Is this fact being investigated/denied or something ? Maybe there were some additional car bombs in there just to make sure.
And maybe they even tried to get down more. Seeing a picture of NY I saw that the Empire State building is just a few miles off the WTC. What about another jumbo going in there?!
The RAF (or "red army fraction" was active almost exclusively in Germany. It is suspected that they got some basic training in the near east, but that was almost 20 years ago. These days about nothing happens for which they can be held responsible.
Secondly, EVERY assault or bombing by the RAF was followed by a letter of confession to force their aims and goals (like freeing imprisoned member and such).
Nowadays the RAF is presumed dead by german authorities.
Maybe they got a round of funding from the CIA. Wouldn't be the first time for America to support and help out "contra"-like groups. (Remember Nicaragua)