> According to the lecturer, there are over 50 million handicapped people in the United States alone
According to the United States Census for 2000, there is a total population of 281,421,906 people in the United States. For argument's sake, let's round that up to an even 300 million.
So... one in six persons is handicapped?
I suspect accidentally or purposefully inflated numbers, though I'm quite willing to be proven wrong. Does anyone have any hard data that would back up, or refute this particular claim?
Re:SegWay in Combination with other things
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 1
Point 9: Substitute 'lots' with 'lost'.
SegWay in Combination with other things
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 1
After looking over Segway's site and the information on the product, and after reading several comments here, I've had some thought, both serious and silly, and I thought I'd post a few of them.
1. What's the pounds-per-square-inch of force at the two points where the wheels meet the surface being traveled on? Is this enough to seriously injure feet/break bones when loaded with someone of average mass?
2. How does this thing handle on more slippery surfaces? The tires seem designed for dry surfaces where a smooth tire can expect reasonably good traction.
3. If I were to have a view from an overhead camera of an open squarish area with a bunch of salesrobots riding these around while trying to conduct business on their cellphones and reading their latest pager messages, would it be much like watching a science film about how molecules speed up and collide under heat/pressure?;-)
4. Are these things classifiable as motor vehicles? Will they have to obey laws and precaustions such that pedestrians can be reasonably assured they won't be facing being impacted by the individuals like those mentioned in (3)?
5. I'm probably immune to this, as I have zero to no rhythm, but for those more active individuals that can actually move in time with music, how will the SegWay interpret body motion that isn't meant to convey directional commands to the unit itself?
6. How does it handle steep inclines/declines? Potholes? Different surfaces (hard/firm on one wheel, soft/sandy on another) - ie, a shoulder drop in a motor vehicle?
7. Will it have an emergency 'stop NOW' button to tell the processors "Halt horizontal movement and just balance, NOW"?
8. Are the electronics sections reasonably proof from the elements of weather?
9. Thanks to SUBWAY (tm), Jared lots a whole bunch of pounds. Thanks to SegWay, he can find them again.
emusic.com's got a pretty wonderful idea, but their decision to limit their encoding to a bitrate of 128 left me disappointed. Had they encoded at 320 or even 256, I would have signed up within minutes of reading the FAQ file.
Ah well, maybe someday. Back to ripping my own MP3's from my own CD's (at 320 bit) as I buy 'em. A bitrate of 128 just isn't worth it for me, even at a pricetag of 'free trial'.
> In the case of Magic Lantern, they'll do it from their office. > It'll be up to the target to do the st00pid thing and run the executable.
Or... perhaps it's just delivered to his machine as an application or operating system upgrade. All it takes is a verified IP in the right upgrade engine, and a 'different' upgrade is sent than most get, or perhaps even see.
You usually even click to agree to allow the upgrade to happen, thus, consent. Admittedly, not very informed consent, but... consent none the less.
You know, I normally avoid making a comment like this, but it's just disheartening and discouraging to go to the effort to get your links right, format the text of the entire article nicely so the register doesn't get Slashdotted, only to have the very same submission rejected.
It'd be nice to know who rejected one's submissions and why, and yes, I checked my URL's to make sure they worked.:-(
I give up. No point in submitting articles - someone else in the in-group will do it anyway. *shrug*
So essentially, if I read this correctly, the proposed new network address translation protocol (CAT) would assign my internal addresses to me, and expose certain aspects of my internal network back to the cable provider, so they can provide me better service by charging me according to the size of my internal network.
Excuse me while I pick up my mind, I think it jumped out my left ear in protest at the sheer idiocy of the suggestion.
The security of my internal network is not negotiable. My file servers' samba shares, which hold my scanned documents, financial records, and other personal files are not viewable by my neighbors for a _reason_.
Well if they want me to house their CAT on my firewall, no problem. My primary firewall will be happy to house their stupid little protocol, and it can learn all about my internal network, right up until it hits the next machine down the line before the hub: The REAL firewall.
Just as it is not wasting one's vote to vote for a non-popular party in any given election, it is not wasting one's time learning how to use non-popular software.
Learning the principles of the application, or family of applications surrounding a concept is more important than any particular implementation.
The computer software market is a fickle beast. What is popular today will not likely remain so.
Visicalc or WordStar anyone?;-) Funny how a lot of those basic concepts still map reasonably well to today's usage of spreadsheets or editors.
The current posture of the USDOJ with respect to Microsoft reminds me of Robin Williams skit involving British Bobbies (police), and making an arrest? "Stop, or I shall say stop again!"
Years ago, there was a bar in Ontario Canada that I used to frequent. They installed a brethalyzer unit that cost 25 cents to use. It dispensed a sterile paper straw. You inserted the straw in the inlet for the air, blew, and got a reading.
It even flashed red rather brightly when you were over the legal limit (.08 for that corner of the world).
At first the patrons didn't like it, but in later weeks it got pretty frequent use, and for some became the badge of honor in a game called "Let's see if we can cause the machine to overload on fumes". The guys would laugh when they set the machine off, but they _would_ go sit back down and wait it out a while longer.
Mission accomplished, and without the need for the police to become involved at all, or without them becoming notified either.
Admittedly, this doesn't address the issues of people who won't voluntarily use such a machine, or those that drink in an establishment (or their home) that doesn't have one of these testers, but it was a good non-intrusive, non-offensive start, and it _did_ accomplish some good.
This makes things a bit more difficult to track up front before I purchase a CPU, but eventually the hardware review sites will publish the metrics that people ask for.
Me, I'll probably look for an approximation of how many KKeys/sec I can handle for the distributed.net project with a given processor, assuming 99.9% load devoted to the effort.
After all, that's what MOST of my CPU cycles seem to be going towards.;-)
There is a theory that there are two parallel universes. One universe knows the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything, but does not know the answer. The other universe knows the answer to the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything, but does not know the question.
Should the question and the answer ever be present in the same universe at the same time, both universes would instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more inexplicable.
There is another theory that states that this has already happened.
[ A better eulogy to Douglas Adams, I can not think of. ]
drivers/net/rrunner.c looks to be borked.
on
2.4.9 Kernel Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Submitted for amusement, a segment of make modules:
make -C net modules
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.9/drivers/net'
gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/usr/src/linux-2.4.9/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common -pipe -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -march=i686 -malign-functions=4 -DMODULE -DMODVERSIONS -include/usr/src/linux-2.4.9/include/linux/modversions.h -c -o rrunner.o rrunner.c
rrunner.c:1241: macro `min' used with only 2 args
rrunner.c:1252: macro `min' used with only 2 args
rrunner.c: In function `rr_dump':
rrunner.c:1241: parse error before `__x'
rrunner.c:1241: `__x' undeclared (first use in this function)
rrunner.c:1241: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
rrunner.c:1241: for each function it appears in.)
rrunner.c:1241: `__y' undeclared (first use in this function)
rrunner.c:1252: parse error before `__x'
rrunner.c:1221: warning: `len' might be used uninitialized in this function
make[2]: *** [rrunner.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.9/drivers/net'
make[1]: *** [_modsubdir_net] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.9/drivers'
make: *** [_mod_drivers] Error 2
> Circumvention activities are not, and never have been, for use when copyright protection devices fail.
I beg to differ. I purchased "Dungeon Keeper II" when it first came out, only to find that the SafeDisc(r) copy protection (brought to you by MacroVision Corporation, Macrovision UK Ltd., and Macrovision Japan and Asia K.K.) completely interfered with my ability to play the game. Why? Because I choose to use Plextor CDRom products. If I remember correctly, Plextor's response to a serious error on the CD media is to spin-down, spin-up, and attempt to re-read, and it may attempt this several times.
Safedisc(r) is completely incompatible with Plextor products for that reason - it has something to do with the timing, perhaps the long time that Plextor drives take in their re-trying period before returning a "Sorry, couldn't read that sector" result.
I did my research, figured out I was pretty much hosed, and then called Technical Support at Electronic Arts to see if they had a patch to deal with this problem. I didn't hold out much hope, but I figured I'd give them a crack at making me happy.
I spent 30 minutes on the phone (most of it on hold) on my dime, during prime time rates to talk with a very nice technical support person only to find out:
a) They are aware of this problem with Plextor Drives.
b) They have no patch available.
c) They will not be releasing a patch to address this problem. (Plextor owners are out of luck.)
So, I asked the nice Tech Support person what I could do?
He said that I could try returning the product for a refund.
I pointed out that the software package was now _open_, and that Best Buy wouldn't take the game back in that condition.
He said I could send them all the original materials and box back to Electronic Arts, and they'd get an unopened replacement out to me within six to eight weeks, which I could then return to Best Buy with my receipt.
I pointed out that went well beyond their (I think) 30 day limit on returns of software.
He said he was sorry...
It was then that I informed him that I'd be using the crack that would remove the SafeDisc(r) protection, found on gamecopyworld.com. I also requested that he put this exact information on my problem report, and to make sure that someone with decision making power in the company got to see my complaint, and how _I_ would have to resolve it in order to play my new game that I just shelled out $50.00 USD for.
He got really nervous at that point (I think their calls are monitored by supervisors), and said he couldn't recommend I do that, but could understand my frustration. He also said what I was doing wasn't exactly kosher and could be risky.
I volunteered to give him my full name, address, phone numbers, my address at work, and invited him to put it with my complaint. Basically my attitude became "Go for it, I can't WAIT for the subpoena or the warrant. The fact that I have to download a software crack from Germany to use my legitimately purchased US software is LUDICROUS."
Now...
What were you saying about there never being a legitimate use for circumvention devices?
I know, I know, I could have shelled out more money for a different drive. But I shouldn't HAVE to. Copy protection should _not_ get in my way when I'm working with the _original_. Copy protection should only prevent me from making a copy, nothing more.
It was one of those "It's the principle that matters" things.
Slashdot Mirror
> According to the lecturer, there are over 50 million handicapped people in the United States alone
According to the United States Census for 2000, there is a total population of 281,421,906 people in the United States. For argument's sake, let's round that up to an even 300 million.
So... one in six persons is handicapped?
I suspect accidentally or purposefully inflated numbers, though I'm quite willing to be proven wrong. Does anyone have any hard data that would back up, or refute this particular claim?
Point 9: Substitute 'lots' with 'lost'.
After looking over Segway's site and the information on the product, and after reading several comments here, I've had some thought, both serious and silly, and I thought I'd post a few of them.
;-)
1. What's the pounds-per-square-inch of force at the two points where the wheels meet the surface being traveled on? Is this enough to seriously injure feet/break bones when loaded with someone of average mass?
2. How does this thing handle on more slippery surfaces? The tires seem designed for dry surfaces where a smooth tire can expect reasonably good traction.
3. If I were to have a view from an overhead camera of an open squarish area with a bunch of salesrobots riding these around while trying to conduct business on their cellphones and reading their latest pager messages, would it be much like watching a science film about how molecules speed up and collide under heat/pressure?
4. Are these things classifiable as motor vehicles? Will they have to obey laws and precaustions such that pedestrians can be reasonably assured they won't be facing being impacted by the individuals like those mentioned in (3)?
5. I'm probably immune to this, as I have zero to no rhythm, but for those more active individuals that can actually move in time with music, how will the SegWay interpret body motion that isn't meant to convey directional commands to the unit itself?
6. How does it handle steep inclines/declines? Potholes? Different surfaces (hard/firm on one wheel, soft/sandy on another) - ie, a shoulder drop in a motor vehicle?
7. Will it have an emergency 'stop NOW' button to tell the processors "Halt horizontal movement and just balance, NOW"?
8. Are the electronics sections reasonably proof from the elements of weather?
9. Thanks to SUBWAY (tm), Jared lots a whole bunch of pounds. Thanks to SegWay, he can find them again.
Yeah, but with the great memory price crash that happened this year, one can always hope. ;-)
... will finally get a body. ;-)
Okay, that proves it, I definitely need more coffee this morning.
emusic.com's got a pretty wonderful idea, but their decision to limit their encoding to a bitrate of 128 left me disappointed. Had they encoded at 320 or even 256, I would have signed up within minutes of reading the FAQ file.
Ah well, maybe someday. Back to ripping my own MP3's from my own CD's (at 320 bit) as I buy 'em. A bitrate of 128 just isn't worth it for me, even at a pricetag of 'free trial'.
> In the case of Magic Lantern, they'll do it from their office.
> It'll be up to the target to do the st00pid thing and run the executable.
Or... perhaps it's just delivered to his machine as an application or operating system upgrade. All it takes is a verified IP in the right upgrade engine, and a 'different' upgrade is sent than most get, or perhaps even see.
You usually even click to agree to allow the upgrade to happen, thus, consent. Admittedly, not very informed consent, but... consent none the less.
You know, I normally avoid making a comment like this, but it's just disheartening and discouraging to go to the effort to get your links right, format the text of the entire article nicely so the register doesn't get Slashdotted, only to have the very same submission rejected.
:-(
It'd be nice to know who rejected one's submissions and why, and yes, I checked my URL's to make sure they worked.
I give up. No point in submitting articles - someone else in the in-group will do it anyway. *shrug*
So essentially, if I read this correctly, the proposed new network address translation protocol (CAT) would assign my internal addresses to me, and expose certain aspects of my internal network back to the cable provider, so they can provide me better service by charging me according to the size of my internal network.
Excuse me while I pick up my mind, I think it jumped out my left ear in protest at the sheer idiocy of the suggestion.
The security of my internal network is not negotiable. My file servers' samba shares, which hold my scanned documents, financial records, and other personal files are not viewable by my neighbors for a _reason_.
Well if they want me to house their CAT on my firewall, no problem. My primary firewall will be happy to house their stupid little protocol, and it can learn all about my internal network, right up until it hits the next machine down the line before the hub: The REAL firewall.
There's more than one way to skin this CAT.
Bastards.
Store the encryption software on a non-networked machine (the encryption machine).
Store the encryption keys on removable media that is never left with the encryption machine when encryption/decryption is not actively being done.
Data in encrypted/decrypted form must be brought to the encryption machine via good old sneakernet (diskette).
Extra bonus points if the entire operating system and software suite on the encryption machine lives on read only media, such as a CD-Rom.
FBI Chief: What happen?
FBI Grunt: Someone set up us the disk.
Proof by assertion?
;-) Funny how a lot of those basic concepts still map reasonably well to today's usage of spreadsheets or editors.
Just as it is not wasting one's vote to vote for a non-popular party in any given election, it is not wasting one's time learning how to use non-popular software.
Learning the principles of the application, or family of applications surrounding a concept is more important than any particular implementation.
The computer software market is a fickle beast. What is popular today will not likely remain so.
Visicalc or WordStar anyone?
The current posture of the USDOJ with respect to Microsoft reminds me of Robin Williams skit involving British Bobbies (police), and making an arrest? "Stop, or I shall say stop again!"
Years ago, there was a bar in Ontario Canada that I used to frequent. They installed a brethalyzer unit that cost 25 cents to use. It dispensed a sterile paper straw. You inserted the straw in the inlet for the air, blew, and got a reading.
It even flashed red rather brightly when you were over the legal limit (.08 for that corner of the world).
At first the patrons didn't like it, but in later weeks it got pretty frequent use, and for some became the badge of honor in a game called "Let's see if we can cause the machine to overload on fumes". The guys would laugh when they set the machine off, but they _would_ go sit back down and wait it out a while longer.
Mission accomplished, and without the need for the police to become involved at all, or without them becoming notified either.
Admittedly, this doesn't address the issues of people who won't voluntarily use such a machine, or those that drink in an establishment (or their home) that doesn't have one of these testers, but it was a good non-intrusive, non-offensive start, and it _did_ accomplish some good.
This makes things a bit more difficult to track up front before I purchase a CPU, but eventually the hardware review sites will publish the metrics that people ask for.
;-)
Me, I'll probably look for an approximation of how many KKeys/sec I can handle for the distributed.net project with a given processor, assuming 99.9% load devoted to the effort.
After all, that's what MOST of my CPU cycles seem to be going towards.
Just for fun I started rotating the letters in ASCI backwards... How much relation to "WOPR" (War Operations Planned Response) was there?
50% match, 2 first letters:
ASCI
ZRBH
YQAG
XPZF
WOYE
Not nearly as funny as rotating IBM backwards to get HAL was, but...
There is a theory that there are two parallel universes. One universe knows the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything, but does not know the answer. The other universe knows the answer to the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything, but does not know the question.
Should the question and the answer ever be present in the same universe at the same time, both universes would instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more inexplicable.
There is another theory that states that this has already happened.
[ A better eulogy to Douglas Adams, I can not think of. ]
Submitted for amusement, a segment of make modules:
/usr/src/linux-2.4.9/include/linux/modversions.h -c -o rrunner.o rrunner.c
make -C net modules
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.9/drivers/net'
gcc -D__KERNEL__ -I/usr/src/linux-2.4.9/include -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common -pipe -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -march=i686 -malign-functions=4 -DMODULE -DMODVERSIONS -include
rrunner.c:1241: macro `min' used with only 2 args
rrunner.c:1252: macro `min' used with only 2 args
rrunner.c: In function `rr_dump':
rrunner.c:1241: parse error before `__x'
rrunner.c:1241: `__x' undeclared (first use in this function)
rrunner.c:1241: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
rrunner.c:1241: for each function it appears in.)
rrunner.c:1241: `__y' undeclared (first use in this function)
rrunner.c:1252: parse error before `__x'
rrunner.c:1221: warning: `len' might be used uninitialized in this function
make[2]: *** [rrunner.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.9/drivers/net'
make[1]: *** [_modsubdir_net] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.9/drivers'
make: *** [_mod_drivers] Error 2
zpengo writes:
> Circumvention activities are not, and never have been, for use when copyright protection devices fail.
I beg to differ. I purchased "Dungeon Keeper II" when it first came out, only to find that the SafeDisc(r) copy protection (brought to you by MacroVision Corporation, Macrovision UK Ltd., and Macrovision Japan and Asia K.K.) completely interfered with my ability to play the game. Why? Because I choose to use Plextor CDRom products. If I remember correctly, Plextor's response to a serious error on the CD media is to spin-down, spin-up, and attempt to re-read, and it may attempt this several times.
Safedisc(r) is completely incompatible with Plextor products for that reason - it has something to do with the timing, perhaps the long time that Plextor drives take in their re-trying period before returning a "Sorry, couldn't read that sector" result.
I did my research, figured out I was pretty much hosed, and then called Technical Support at Electronic Arts to see if they had a patch to deal with this problem. I didn't hold out much hope, but I figured I'd give them a crack at making me happy.
I spent 30 minutes on the phone (most of it on hold) on my dime, during prime time rates to talk with a very nice technical support person only to find out:
a) They are aware of this problem with Plextor Drives.
b) They have no patch available.
c) They will not be releasing a patch to address this problem. (Plextor owners are out of luck.)
So, I asked the nice Tech Support person what I could do?
He said that I could try returning the product for a refund.
I pointed out that the software package was now _open_, and that Best Buy wouldn't take the game back in that condition.
He said I could send them all the original materials and box back to Electronic Arts, and they'd get an unopened replacement out to me within six to eight weeks, which I could then return to Best Buy with my receipt.
I pointed out that went well beyond their (I think) 30 day limit on returns of software.
He said he was sorry...
It was then that I informed him that I'd be using the crack that would remove the SafeDisc(r) protection, found on gamecopyworld.com. I also requested that he put this exact information on my problem report, and to make sure that someone with decision making power in the company got to see my complaint, and how _I_ would have to resolve it in order to play my new game that I just shelled out $50.00 USD for.
He got really nervous at that point (I think their calls are monitored by supervisors), and said he couldn't recommend I do that, but could understand my frustration. He also said what I was doing wasn't exactly kosher and could be risky.
I volunteered to give him my full name, address, phone numbers, my address at work, and invited him to put it with my complaint. Basically my attitude became "Go for it, I can't WAIT for the subpoena or the warrant. The fact that I have to download a software crack from Germany to use my legitimately purchased US software is LUDICROUS."
Now...
What were you saying about there never being a legitimate use for circumvention devices?
I know, I know, I could have shelled out more money for a different drive. But I shouldn't HAVE to. Copy protection should _not_ get in my way when I'm working with the _original_. Copy protection should only prevent me from making a copy, nothing more.
It was one of those "It's the principle that matters" things.