Because I don't want to waste my time with support calls from even more computer illeterate people. My mail server is good for me and my wife - and we know when its down because of my ISP, me tinkering, etc.
I love grandma and all, but I don't want to get weekly/monthly calls saying "My interweb-net page isn't working!"
You forget those silly little "points" you accumulate with every moving voliation in the United States. Speeding is like 2. Reckless endangerment (such as flagrant and excessive speeding) is 5. Collect 7 and your license is suspended, or you go to jail. Money doesn't buy you out of quite everything.
While I'm a M$ whore, I do what I can and run Litestep at home. A great shell replacement and includes VWM, custom shell scripts, yadda yadda yadda. But it doesn't always play nice with Winamp, despite several modules that interface the two. Its great the guys at Nullsoft have taken into consideration those running Litestep!
Tinie tiny problem. A blaze of solar energy wouldn't evenly heat a person up, it'd fry their clothing/skin off. You're making the assumption that if you put a turkey under this beam it would heat up in.0x seconds, ready for Thanksgiving dinner (if you're in the US). Unfortunately, things don't work like that - that's why your Thanksgiving turkey takes several hours to cook - it has to slowly heat the inside. If you baked it at a couple hundred degrees, you'd just end up with a charred mass, just like the skin of your theoretical person.
You're dang straight I'm switching when I can. I have had my # for about 2 years, but I changed jobs and moved into a different apartment. In both places my reception totally stinks. I can only talk to mom when I"m driving to or from work, or out for dinner etc - very not good. I've been intentionally waiting to change service until my cell provider stops being an annoying brat and lets me move my number to a company that actually gets reception where I live and work.
I knew a girl in my CS program who was double majoring between A&S Modern Feminist Studies and Engineering Computer Science. Why? Because her parents wouldn't help her financially with college unless she majored in "something that can get [her] a real job." She hated CS, but didn't want to shell out the $$$/get loans for a top 30 school private education. Ooops.
Maybe not quite to the modular level described, but www.mythtv.org can have a front-end decoder box, a back-end encoder somewhere else, each connected by ethernet. Hell, if you wanted, you could share a stand-alone harddrive tower via NFS and whatnot. As long as you have a v4l compatible tuner, you're ready to roll.
You seem to be (somewhat) missing the point that AOL really offers two up front consumer services. The first is that of an internet service provider - where you dial one of those ancient modulator-demodulators and the other end picks up and makes beeps and boops.
The other service is that of e-mail, IM, a flashy front page with tons of ads for crap no sane person would buy, etc. Plus the "AOL keyword".
Typically, the $23.99/month gets both services. However, you can keep the second (all flashy) for ~$12/month if you have an alternate dial-up. I know my brother (in my opinion) blows $12/month this way since he has a cable modem for high speed internet already. He just keeps the AOL interface because he's familiar with that and he wants to keep his e-mail address.
Does this sound like a bad idea to anyone else? For $500 the illicit "Enlarge your penis" spam we all hate most of all can get a probably large list of valid e-mail addresses - and the companies will still be untraceable as they are now. They'll just have to pay a lot less for a list of e-mail addresses. What about "legal" companies outside Colorado or Missouri? Would the be prosecuted? Where?
This sounds like one of those great, feel-good laws that would be unenforcable and (as much as I hate to say it) just cost legit businesses money to cover their butts.
My univeristy has put a block on bandwidth allowed to a particular port (each dorm room connection). After you hit about 100meg/day external speed, your bandwidth was drastically limited until 2am the next day (some sort of server reset). My way around worked quite well. Professors, particularly those doing research, are exempt from this bandwidth limit. As a web developer for one of the professor's research projects, I setup a proxy server on the server he purchased for research. Since my computer had no external connection, I could Kazaa with impunity
What? Rip from CD? Re-rip? Heck, boy, I just download them from WinMX, Kazaa, DirectConnect, etc. Tphffft - buy a CD. I'm the bastard the RIAA is trying to get!!!
For those of you who don't have the joys of a Sprint PCS phone, their customer support is now a fake human intelligence. Instead of 1,2,3 options, you are now prompted to "say" what you want, like "How many minutes do I have left?". Unfortunately for me, they didn't have "I want to cancel my service", but it does respond to "I want to talk to a human" if you speak in a clear, firm, annoyed voice.
Okay, maybe not the "first", but certainly the concept is old (read pre-50s home of the future). The Geodesic Dome Home. While not quite modular, you can set up a frame with you, two friends, a standard toolbox, and a weekend. Timeberline Geodesics has many floorplans to work with. Geodome homes use less materials, are cheaper to heat and cool (higher interior volume:exterior surface area ratio). Only hiccup is the weird shape - make sure to find a contractor who is flexible and knows city/county ordinances. Great thing about these homes is if you do need a new wing, you can knock out a wall of your living room or kitchen and just build another frame. Voila.
Even if you don't want to have a one handed keyboard (no good for UT, Halflife, Q3, Tribes, etc), what about porting the button structure to a mouse? I have the M$ Intellimouse Optical, which gives me 5 buttons and scroll (click the scroll is a button too). You can easy add two more buttons on the main/top buttons with how this guy does things. That gives you 6 easy to hit buttons, plus your "awsd" cross and the q/e keys (but I use "sedf") for a total of 8 handy, easy to use keys. Many a time I've wanted a few extra controls.
Everyone talks about the "Hi, I have a terrible dark secret" way to tell the world, but forgot the aspect of "Please don't torture the location out of me!"
Lock the plans in a swiss vault - that'll protect the thing for long enough. Then, if one govt finds out about it, tell all the others and the s#$t-storm will protect it for a few more years.
The article states that the storage capacity of this new material/system is about equal to 7800 DVDs. Just to get nit-picky and technical, and to educate people some, this number will probably be lower.
When DVDs are burned and read, you don't simply read raw data off. The information is, of course, encoded. The DVD (and CD for that matter) specification says to use Reed-Solmon encoding. Saving the long math, RS encoding is about the most advanced error-correcting scheme that can be implemented in low-cost hardware today. By encoding data this way, your DVD (or CD) can become fairly scratched, but still play. RS protects against multiple-point errors. However, there is a price to pay - for every ~33k byte block on a DVD, almost 5K bytes are used in the parity checks for the DVD. See this file for more gritty details about DVDs. This means your 4.7GB DVD really holds about 5.48 GB of raw data.
Now, why is this relevant? Harddrives use their own error correcting schemes too. Manufacturers have the luxury of creating their own encoding systems since they're the ones that provide the read/write mechanisms. You can't pull the platter out of one harddrive and stick it in another. Hard drives typically use CRC (cyclic redundancy check) encoding schemes. I know you have all gotten CRC errors on a floppy way back when - that's what it stands for. Anyway, CRC is much less efficent when you compare the protected data to parity information ratios. While I wasn't able to pull the actual numbers from the Internet or my old math books, you can find a discussion and sample math here.
When you boil it down and relate all this information to our magical harddrive, the maximum usable density of the data would hover between 85%, or 6630 DVDs/in^2, to 60%, a measly 4680 DVDs/in^2, of the listed capacity. This is all assuming that the ideal lab conditions are maintained for a consumer level product.
As always, beware what the numbers tell you. However, if this can fly, then it would be an awesome step forward. Once you get Windows 2010 installed, you might even have a few Gig to play around with!
Most people are relying on the woman to be able to move her had a small amount. As the author stated, he would rather not rely on devices like that.
First, this is intended for night-time use only by a person who won't roll around in her sleep. My thought is to have some fun with a pair of cheap glasses (perhaps sans eyepieces). 2 photo/IR-diodes and 2 IR LEDs, one pair for each eye. Tune the feed back on the photo-diodes so they are off when her eye is closed and on when her eye is open (or vice versa). If you use light-based diodes, then the whites of her eye would be more reflective than her eyelids (closed eyes).
Hook the two up to a differential circuit. To sent off an alarm, she would simply have to open one eye and keep the other closed - not a task most of use do naturally. Hopefully this could work when there is more ambiant light around too, since its a differential.
The added benefit is that you only need high gauge wire and 4 light-weight LEDs on these glasses - not a heavy or cumbersome device. Worst thing weight-wise would be a AA battery that would be kept with the rest of the circuitry on an external board.
Please tell us whatever you come up with! We/.'ers rarely have a chance to do more than bitch about RIAA, DCMA, or sling code around - we like to be humanitarians on occassion too!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, if the porn sites know where I live, I'm sure this guy can figure it out too.
And that's the problem with the US!
WTF?!?!
Neither does Slashdot.
AC whino
bob@bob.com
Poor Bob. So much spam, so much porn. Poor Bob.
Because I don't want to waste my time with support calls from even more computer illeterate people. My mail server is good for me and my wife - and we know when its down because of my ISP, me tinkering, etc.
I love grandma and all, but I don't want to get weekly/monthly calls saying "My interweb-net page isn't working!"
You forget those silly little "points" you accumulate with every moving voliation in the United States. Speeding is like 2. Reckless endangerment (such as flagrant and excessive speeding) is 5. Collect 7 and your license is suspended, or you go to jail. Money doesn't buy you out of quite everything.
While I'm a M$ whore, I do what I can and run Litestep at home. A great shell replacement and includes VWM, custom shell scripts, yadda yadda yadda. But it doesn't always play nice with Winamp, despite several modules that interface the two. Its great the guys at Nullsoft have taken into consideration those running Litestep!
Tinie tiny problem. A blaze of solar energy wouldn't evenly heat a person up, it'd fry their clothing/skin off. You're making the assumption that if you put a turkey under this beam it would heat up in .0x seconds, ready for Thanksgiving dinner (if you're in the US). Unfortunately, things don't work like that - that's why your Thanksgiving turkey takes several hours to cook - it has to slowly heat the inside. If you baked it at a couple hundred degrees, you'd just end up with a charred mass, just like the skin of your theoretical person.
You're dang straight I'm switching when I can. I have had my # for about 2 years, but I changed jobs and moved into a different apartment. In both places my reception totally stinks. I can only talk to mom when I"m driving to or from work, or out for dinner etc - very not good. I've been intentionally waiting to change service until my cell provider stops being an annoying brat and lets me move my number to a company that actually gets reception where I live and work.
I knew a girl in my CS program who was double majoring between A&S Modern Feminist Studies and Engineering Computer Science. Why? Because her parents wouldn't help her financially with college unless she majored in "something that can get [her] a real job." She hated CS, but didn't want to shell out the $$$/get loans for a top 30 school private education. Ooops.
"the distance from the parallel car at the outset (p)" - but that still doesn't help a whole helluva lot
Maybe not quite to the modular level described, but www.mythtv.org can have a front-end decoder box, a back-end encoder somewhere else, each connected by ethernet. Hell, if you wanted, you could share a stand-alone harddrive tower via NFS and whatnot. As long as you have a v4l compatible tuner, you're ready to roll.
The other service is that of e-mail, IM, a flashy front page with tons of ads for crap no sane person would buy, etc. Plus the "AOL keyword".
Typically, the $23.99/month gets both services. However, you can keep the second (all flashy) for ~$12/month if you have an alternate dial-up. I know my brother (in my opinion) blows $12/month this way since he has a cable modem for high speed internet already. He just keeps the AOL interface because he's familiar with that and he wants to keep his e-mail address.
Does this sound like a bad idea to anyone else? For $500 the illicit "Enlarge your penis" spam we all hate most of all can get a probably large list of valid e-mail addresses - and the companies will still be untraceable as they are now. They'll just have to pay a lot less for a list of e-mail addresses. What about "legal" companies outside Colorado or Missouri? Would the be prosecuted? Where?
This sounds like one of those great, feel-good laws that would be unenforcable and (as much as I hate to say it) just cost legit businesses money to cover their butts.
Hell, I just never type in a real e-mail address. BTW, whoever owns "bob@bob.com", I'm truely sorry.
My univeristy has put a block on bandwidth allowed to a particular port (each dorm room connection). After you hit about 100meg/day external speed, your bandwidth was drastically limited until 2am the next day (some sort of server reset). My way around worked quite well. Professors, particularly those doing research, are exempt from this bandwidth limit. As a web developer for one of the professor's research projects, I setup a proxy server on the server he purchased for research. Since my computer had no external connection, I could Kazaa with impunity
What? Rip from CD? Re-rip? Heck, boy, I just download them from WinMX, Kazaa, DirectConnect, etc. Tphffft - buy a CD. I'm the bastard the RIAA is trying to get!!!
For those of you who don't have the joys of a Sprint PCS phone, their customer support is now a fake human intelligence. Instead of 1,2,3 options, you are now prompted to "say" what you want, like "How many minutes do I have left?". Unfortunately for me, they didn't have "I want to cancel my service", but it does respond to "I want to talk to a human" if you speak in a clear, firm, annoyed voice.
Okay, maybe not the "first", but certainly the concept is old (read pre-50s home of the future). The Geodesic Dome Home. While not quite modular, you can set up a frame with you, two friends, a standard toolbox, and a weekend. Timeberline Geodesics has many floorplans to work with. Geodome homes use less materials, are cheaper to heat and cool (higher interior volume:exterior surface area ratio). Only hiccup is the weird shape - make sure to find a contractor who is flexible and knows city/county ordinances. Great thing about these homes is if you do need a new wing, you can knock out a wall of your living room or kitchen and just build another frame. Voila.
Even if you don't want to have a one handed keyboard (no good for UT, Halflife, Q3, Tribes, etc), what about porting the button structure to a mouse? I have the M$ Intellimouse Optical, which gives me 5 buttons and scroll (click the scroll is a button too). You can easy add two more buttons on the main/top buttons with how this guy does things. That gives you 6 easy to hit buttons, plus your "awsd" cross and the q/e keys (but I use "sedf") for a total of 8 handy, easy to use keys. Many a time I've wanted a few extra controls.
Lock the plans in a swiss vault - that'll protect the thing for long enough. Then, if one govt finds out about it, tell all the others and the s#$t-storm will protect it for a few more years.
When DVDs are burned and read, you don't simply read raw data off. The information is, of course, encoded. The DVD (and CD for that matter) specification says to use Reed-Solmon encoding. Saving the long math, RS encoding is about the most advanced error-correcting scheme that can be implemented in low-cost hardware today. By encoding data this way, your DVD (or CD) can become fairly scratched, but still play. RS protects against multiple-point errors. However, there is a price to pay - for every ~33k byte block on a DVD, almost 5K bytes are used in the parity checks for the DVD. See this file for more gritty details about DVDs. This means your 4.7GB DVD really holds about 5.48 GB of raw data.
Now, why is this relevant? Harddrives use their own error correcting schemes too. Manufacturers have the luxury of creating their own encoding systems since they're the ones that provide the read/write mechanisms. You can't pull the platter out of one harddrive and stick it in another. Hard drives typically use CRC (cyclic redundancy check) encoding schemes. I know you have all gotten CRC errors on a floppy way back when - that's what it stands for. Anyway, CRC is much less efficent when you compare the protected data to parity information ratios. While I wasn't able to pull the actual numbers from the Internet or my old math books, you can find a discussion and sample math here.
When you boil it down and relate all this information to our magical harddrive, the maximum usable density of the data would hover between 85%, or 6630 DVDs/in^2, to 60%, a measly 4680 DVDs/in^2, of the listed capacity. This is all assuming that the ideal lab conditions are maintained for a consumer level product.
As always, beware what the numbers tell you. However, if this can fly, then it would be an awesome step forward. Once you get Windows 2010 installed, you might even have a few Gig to play around with!
First, this is intended for night-time use only by a person who won't roll around in her sleep. My thought is to have some fun with a pair of cheap glasses (perhaps sans eyepieces). 2 photo/IR-diodes and 2 IR LEDs, one pair for each eye. Tune the feed back on the photo-diodes so they are off when her eye is closed and on when her eye is open (or vice versa). If you use light-based diodes, then the whites of her eye would be more reflective than her eyelids (closed eyes).
Hook the two up to a differential circuit. To sent off an alarm, she would simply have to open one eye and keep the other closed - not a task most of use do naturally. Hopefully this could work when there is more ambiant light around too, since its a differential.
The added benefit is that you only need high gauge wire and 4 light-weight LEDs on these glasses - not a heavy or cumbersome device. Worst thing weight-wise would be a AA battery that would be kept with the rest of the circuitry on an external board.
Please tell us whatever you come up with! We /.'ers rarely have a chance to do more than bitch about RIAA, DCMA, or sling code around - we like to be humanitarians on occassion too!!!