``A decisive majority'' of shares not affiliated with the Hewlett and Packard families voted yes, Fiorina said.
It's going to take more than just a majority of non-hewlett shares to swing this one. The Hewlett family's shares account for 18% of the company. It's going to take *61%* of the remaining 82% to make a majority of the total shares.
I'm guessing based on the photo. This might be totally wrong, but it's the best explanation I can some up with:
I doubt if they're using galvanometers and mirrors to scan that image onto the desktop. For one, they're too expensive, and also that pattern is way too complex to draw with even the fastest galvos.
More likely it's a hologram etched onto a lens, with a really bright laser diode behind it. I'm skeptical as to how visible that keyboard would be except in complete darkness.
So how to they determine which key you're pressing? Well, if they were scanning the image onto the surface, it would just be a matter of using a single photo transistor to measure the brightness of the dot as it moves across the surface. If the brightness changes at a particular point, then you know there's an obstruction. You can map this to a particular key by taking into account the positions of the fingers in the normal typing position. Multiple keys might be obstructed at one time - you only count the one that's closest to the light source.
If it's a static image, it's a little harder. The only way I can think of is to either use a CCD to to capture the whole image, or use a mechanical photo interruptor to blank out a section of the image at a time.
If it's cost effective and it really works, this is a damned impressive product.
It does this by taking the music that's playing and mixing it into the microphone preamp 180 degrees out of phase
Actually it does it by *inverting* one of the signals, and then applying some delay to the other signal to account for the propagation time of the sound. You can only make a signal 180 degrees out of phase at a particular frequency.
Since they're less rigid and have less total mass to 'average out' any irregularities, what happens when there's a small variation that slightly unbalances the disc?
I think the issue is not so much if there's an imbalance in the disc to begin with, but that the centrifugal force at high rotational speeds is enough in itself to warp the disk. IIRC, when the CD was introduced, Philips estimated the maximum speed at something like 48X. This has turned out to be pretty accurate - note that today's CDROMs have only been able to significantly break this barrier by using multi-beam heads at lower rotational speeds. I have to admit though - I don't know if they did that just to reduce noise/wear/cost, or whether it was due to the mechanical limits of the CD.
a) because it's slashdotted b) because the link is a pdf and I don't feel like switching over to my Microsoft system to read it. Since Acrobat is closed source, and the only free PDF readers are shit, I have no way to easily read his document.
Now, I've read the first three volumes of TAOCP, and I have all the respect in the world for Knuth. He's a brilliant guy.
However, I think he has an counter-productive obsession with typesetting. TeX is great for formulas, and PDF is great for sending stuff to a print shop... but most of us just need to communicate plain english characters (whether prose or code) efficiently an effectively, in a manner that work on all platforms. Plain ASCII works best for me. HTML is pushing it.
Damn, that aint bad. We're doing the buffering in an SRAM, with a CPLD acting as kind of a DMA controller / fifo to pipe data into the decoder. It's about the same number of components and roughly the same cost probably.
I'll take a closer look at the elf. It looks like you've solved similar problems using totally different technology - it looks pretty cost-effective.
Since I have several Macs at home running iTunes, and also an iPod, I'm probably not switching to windows or linux to serve mp3s to the stereo.. BUT it would be nice to serve them over ethernet to a SliMP3. Can I do this with Mac (OS9 preferable, OSX okay)?
We've always supported OSX - it's got real Unix+Perl underneath, so it runs great.
OS9 is another story. We supported OS9 in V1.0 of our software, but after that we decided to drop support because all the bugs/limitations in the ancient MacPerl. Just a couple days ago, they finally released a MacPerl 5.6.1, so there's a good chance we'll be able to get it running on Classic MacOS, too.
I am intruiged by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Please, don't believe me... watch this commerciaro.
Specifically, you guys are using...cs8900a or something for ethernet?
A little tricky due to the fact that I don't think any of the 802.11 cards will talk easily to an 8-bit system. In the mean time there are some cheap bridges. Our UDP streaming protocol works great with wireless - being tuned for low-latency LANs means we're more agressive about retransmitting lost packets.
it says you use a cirrus 4334 dac; isn't that a 43l43
It's a CS4334. There are a whole bunch of CD player DACs from Cirrus which are all basically the same, they just use different formats for the input stream.
It's 8.5" wide, 2.5" tall, and 2" deep. Dunno what kind of SIMMs you're using.:)
does what the Rio Receiver does, mostly
Actually does a lot more:
- clock display
- groovy menu scrolling
- search capability
- way faster UI
- easier setup
- hackable
- proxies to shoutcast, icecast, http, and live365 sources
Hardware decompression, if I recall, so no chance (as opposed to slim chance) of ogg or other codec support.
True, but we can transcode ogg to high bit rate MPEG. Yes, I know it's a hack, but it sounds just as good as the original ogg with HQ VBR.
No amplifier.
That's a feature! What use is a built-in 10W/channel amp, honestly?
Designed and built by geeks, for geeks.
Indeed. Also designed by Slashdot readers, for Slashdot readers.:)
When they upgrade it to have an optional on-screen display, downloadable menus, and MPEG-2 video support, I'll buy four of 'em for an in-house a/v system.
Video is a different story altogether. *way* more bandwidth, needs a powerful PVR-like head-end to serve the thin clients - very exepensive / limited market. We might do a video product in the not-too-distant future, but it won't look much like the SliMP3.
It's been quite a while since Taco wrote his review of our SliMP3 product. The unit he tested was a hand-made prototype that I built in my garage!
Since then, the product is definitely more polished. We've sold a few hundred, we now have a proper case for it, and we have nearly a dozen software developers working on it.
If you're in the market for a network MP3 player, please check out the SliMP3. It is the ONLY completely open-source player, and the ONLY one to use a high quality vacuum fluorescent display instead of a tiny backlit LCD.
If you have any questions about the product, I will answer them under this thread. Sorry for plugging my product after some else's review, but I really think you'll find the SliMP3 more interesting.:)
If anything the child would stop short, since they wouldn't go as fast, potential energy and all.
I'm sure there's a physicist here who can clear this up...
I thought about that, but it seems that the weight of the passenger wouldn't have any direct impact. You lose as much potential energy going downhill as you gain going uphill.
The real difference as I see it is that the wind resistance (due to size) and the friction on the wheels (due to mass) are what change depending on the passenger. On this coaster, the passenger is a larger percentage of the total vehicle (on both counts), so it means these factors have a much greater impact than they would on a large coaster.
One thing I was wondering about this - how heavy is the cart? It looks like 75% of the weight is the passenger. In larger coasters, you have an enormous amount of steel in the vehicle, so the number/size of passengers doesn't make much difference.
This guy has carefully designed the coaster so that you have just enough momentum to reach the bottom of the lift and hook on to the chain, so you don't have to ever get off and push.
I would think that if (god forbid) a small child were to ride, the difference in friction and wind resistance would leave him with quite a bit of velocity still at the end of the ride. If the vehicle were heavier, it wouldn't make much difference right?
The open development team behind the SliMP3 has created one of largest Perl programs in history. We've always ensured that the software is easy to install, and supports as many platforms as possible. That means we have to do certain things like avoiding fork(), and making sure that the Time::HiRes module is available with the distribution, pre-compiled for many architectures. We also deal with the path name differences between Windows and Unix. Those are the main differences - there are about a half dozen other little things, but all in all Perl is a great language and runs well on all platforms.
Version 1.0 of our software *was* compatible with MacOS9. We dropped support for OS9 after that, due to the numerous limitations and problems with the outdated MacPerl. OSX has never been a problem, because it's just Unix and it comes with Perl 5.6.1.
However, now that MacPerl 5.6.1 is available, there is a good chance that we'll be able to get the product working on MacOS Classic again. I am starting work on it today!
Not on a big box but a smallish base, at eye height, with an infinitely flexible yet stable arm, surrounded by a nice frame.
"Infinitely flexible" is probably going a bit too far, don't you think? It goes up and down, left and right, and it tilts. Big whoop. Have you seen the fully articulated, counter-weighted arms that are used in medical lasers and other equipment? Now I'm not saying Apple's display needs that kind of flexibility, but they stopped just one tiny step short of what I believe would have been a perfect monitor mount. It needs to PIVOT.
Back around 1987-1989 Radius made a pivoting monochrome CRT for the Macintosh. It was absolutely brilliant. Wanna work on a full page Word document, turn it to portrait. Switch over to Dark Castle and turn it landscape. IIRC, you didn't even have to restart or change any settings, it would just resize the display automatically when you turned it.
I'm sure this idea must have come up when they were designing the iMac. Why on earth did they leave it out??
It used to be the only one was Lucent's Orinoco/EC - very expensive and not in stores.
There is now a product from Buffalo Technology which does this, call the Airstation Bridge
A lot of people are using these with our ethernet MP3 player. Everybody says the Airstation works great, and it's only about $160. I can't say I've used one yet, myself.
What's the difference between blue, red and green lasers?
Green laser pointers use an infra-red laser diode, with a yag crystal to double the frequency. Also, they increase the brightness of the beam by turning in on and off at about a 60/40 duty cycle, while driving the diode at a higher current than it could handle at 100% duty. You can actually see this by moving the dot back and forth quickly - it appears as a dashed line.
They're a neat toy if you've got $400 to burn (last I checked).
Instead of using fixed magnets to release the energy of the balls hitting each magnet in sccuession, this coil gun uses a series of timed pulses to accellerate the projectile down the length of a tube. That's a block of concrete in the photo, and I think the black spike in the top left corner is the projectile.
a website made up of plagiarized portions of other providers terms of service
A lawyer recently informed me that copyright does not apply to legal documents (including terms of service and licenses). I was surprised at first, but then I realized that I've never seen a (c) on any such document.
So it's actually perfectly okay (and probably a good idea) to "steal" the best parts of other well written legal documents, rather than reinvent them. There is standard language for all of these things, so it would be pretty ridiculous to copyright them. It's not plagiarism.
My g/f in high school used to start her period on exactly the same day as all the other girls on her soccer team - amazing. I've also heard that girls often have their periods in sync with their mothers'. Has anyone formally attempted to relate this to the pendulum phenomenon?
"We don't care about the [Chinese government's] rules. It's none of Cisco's business."
Similar to how Mercedes or BMW didn't care much for what those giant ovens were used for in NAZI Germany
I know many jews who own (or would like to own) Mercedes and BMWs. Some people are intelligent enough not to prejudge others based on atrocities commited (or ignored) by their long deceased ancestors. I suppose you think everyone in Arkansas is a card carrying KKK member?
Mercedes and BMW have been around for quite a while, and much has changed. People die, but businesses can survive for centuries. It's not fair to assume that their hard working employees still sympathize with whoever ran the company decades ago.
Slashdot Mirror
``A decisive majority'' of shares not affiliated with the Hewlett and Packard families voted yes, Fiorina said.
It's going to take more than just a majority of non-hewlett shares to swing this one. The Hewlett family's shares account for 18% of the company. It's going to take *61%* of the remaining 82% to make a majority of the total shares.
I'm guessing based on the photo. This might be totally wrong, but it's the best explanation I can some up with:
I doubt if they're using galvanometers and mirrors to scan that image onto the desktop. For one, they're too expensive, and also that pattern is way too complex to draw with even the fastest galvos.
More likely it's a hologram etched onto a lens, with a really bright laser diode behind it. I'm skeptical as to how visible that keyboard would be except in complete darkness.
So how to they determine which key you're pressing? Well, if they were scanning the image onto the surface, it would just be a matter of using a single photo transistor to measure the brightness of the dot as it moves across the surface. If the brightness changes at a particular point, then you know there's an obstruction. You can map this to a particular key by taking into account the positions of the fingers in the normal typing position. Multiple keys might be obstructed at one time - you only count the one that's closest to the light source.
If it's a static image, it's a little harder. The only way I can think of is to either use a CCD to to capture the whole image, or use a mechanical photo interruptor to blank out a section of the image at a time.
If it's cost effective and it really works, this is a damned impressive product.
It does this by taking the music that's playing and mixing it into the microphone preamp 180 degrees out of phase
Actually it does it by *inverting* one of the signals, and then applying some delay to the other signal to account for the propagation time of the sound. You can only make a signal 180 degrees out of phase at a particular frequency.
But he just kept coming back and harping on that LOC number, no matter how I tried to persuade him that it was meaningless.
Reminds me of a Dilbert strip (paraphasing):
PHB: I read the program you've been working on. Your punctuation needs work - you use too many colons.
Dilbert: I like them, sir. They remind me of you.
Since they're less rigid and have less total mass to 'average out' any irregularities, what happens when there's a small variation that slightly unbalances the disc?
I think the issue is not so much if there's an imbalance in the disc to begin with, but that the centrifugal force at high rotational speeds is enough in itself to warp the disk. IIRC, when the CD was introduced, Philips estimated the maximum speed at something like 48X. This has turned out to be pretty accurate - note that today's CDROMs have only been able to significantly break this barrier by using multi-beam heads at lower rotational speeds. I have to admit though - I don't know if they did that just to reduce noise/wear/cost, or whether it was due to the mechanical limits of the CD.
Acrobat works fine in linux.
if you happen to be running one of the most popular architectures, endorsed by Adobe.
a) because it's slashdotted
b) because the link is a pdf and I don't feel like switching over to my Microsoft system to read it. Since Acrobat is closed source, and the only free PDF readers are shit, I have no way to easily read his document.
Now, I've read the first three volumes of TAOCP, and I have all the respect in the world for Knuth. He's a brilliant guy.
However, I think he has an counter-productive obsession with typesetting. TeX is great for formulas, and PDF is great for sending stuff to a print shop... but most of us just need to communicate plain english characters (whether prose or code) efficiently an effectively, in a manner that work on all platforms. Plain ASCII works best for me. HTML is pushing it.
Why don't people who manufacture these devices document the protocol and put it up on the web?
Uh... here you go:
The Slim UDP Protocol
Damn, that aint bad. We're doing the buffering in an SRAM, with a CPLD acting as kind of a DMA controller / fifo to pipe data into the decoder. It's about the same number of components and roughly the same cost probably.
I'll take a closer look at the elf. It looks like you've solved similar problems using totally different technology - it looks pretty cost-effective.
mp3elf looks pretty slick. I'm curious - how much does the TINI run?
Since I have several Macs at home running iTunes, and also an iPod, I'm probably not switching to windows or linux to serve mp3s to the stereo .. BUT it would be nice to serve them over ethernet to a SliMP3. Can I do this with Mac (OS9 preferable, OSX okay)?
We've always supported OSX - it's got real Unix+Perl underneath, so it runs great.
OS9 is another story. We supported OS9 in V1.0 of our software, but after that we decided to drop support because all the bugs/limitations in the ancient MacPerl. Just a couple days ago, they finally released a MacPerl 5.6.1, so there's a good chance we'll be able to get it running on Classic MacOS, too.
I am intruiged by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Please, don't believe me... watch this commerciaro.
Specifically, you guys are using...cs8900a or something for ethernet?
A little tricky due to the fact that I don't think any of the 802.11 cards will talk easily to an 8-bit system. In the mean time there are some cheap bridges. Our UDP streaming protocol works great with wireless - being tuned for low-latency LANs means we're more agressive about retransmitting lost packets.
it says you use a cirrus 4334 dac; isn't that a 43l43
It's a CS4334. There are a whole bunch of CD player DACs from Cirrus which are all basically the same, they just use different formats for the input stream.
SliMP3
:)
:)
Ubercool device. About the size of a SIMM,
It's 8.5" wide, 2.5" tall, and 2" deep. Dunno what kind of SIMMs you're using.
does what the Rio Receiver does, mostly
Actually does a lot more:
- clock display
- groovy menu scrolling
- search capability
- way faster UI
- easier setup
- hackable
- proxies to shoutcast, icecast, http, and live365 sources
Hardware decompression, if I recall, so no chance (as opposed to slim chance) of ogg or other codec support.
True, but we can transcode ogg to high bit rate MPEG. Yes, I know it's a hack, but it sounds just as good as the original ogg with HQ VBR.
No amplifier.
That's a feature! What use is a built-in 10W/channel amp, honestly?
Designed and built by geeks, for geeks.
Indeed. Also designed by Slashdot readers, for Slashdot readers.
When they upgrade it to have an optional on-screen display, downloadable menus, and MPEG-2 video support, I'll buy four of 'em for an in-house a/v system.
Video is a different story altogether. *way* more bandwidth, needs a powerful PVR-like head-end to serve the thin clients - very exepensive / limited market. We might do a video product in the not-too-distant future, but it won't look much like the SliMP3.
The SliMP3 is less polished
:)
It's been quite a while since Taco wrote his review of our SliMP3 product. The unit he tested was a hand-made prototype that I built in my garage!
Since then, the product is definitely more polished. We've sold a few hundred, we now have a proper case for it, and we have nearly a dozen software developers working on it.
If you're in the market for a network MP3 player, please check out the SliMP3. It is the ONLY completely open-source player, and the ONLY one to use a high quality vacuum fluorescent display instead of a tiny backlit LCD.
If you have any questions about the product, I will answer them under this thread. Sorry for plugging my product after some else's review, but I really think you'll find the SliMP3 more interesting.
If anything the child would stop short, since they wouldn't go as fast, potential energy and all.
I'm sure there's a physicist here who can clear this up...
I thought about that, but it seems that the weight of the passenger wouldn't have any direct impact. You lose as much potential energy going downhill as you gain going uphill.
The real difference as I see it is that the wind resistance (due to size) and the friction on the wheels (due to mass) are what change depending on the passenger. On this coaster, the passenger is a larger percentage of the total vehicle (on both counts), so it means these factors have a much greater impact than they would on a large coaster.
One thing I was wondering about this - how heavy is the cart? It looks like 75% of the weight is the passenger. In larger coasters, you have an enormous amount of steel in the vehicle, so the number/size of passengers doesn't make much difference.
This guy has carefully designed the coaster so that you have just enough momentum to reach the bottom of the lift and hook on to the chain, so you don't have to ever get off and push.
I would think that if (god forbid) a small child were to ride, the difference in friction and wind resistance would leave him with quite a bit of velocity still at the end of the ride. If the vehicle were heavier, it wouldn't make much difference right?
<plug>This is great news for Ethernet MP3 player
The open development team behind the SliMP3 has created one of largest Perl programs in history. We've always ensured that the software is easy to install, and supports as many platforms as possible. That means we have to do certain things like avoiding fork(), and making sure that the Time::HiRes module is available with the distribution, pre-compiled for many architectures. We also deal with the path name differences between Windows and Unix. Those are the main differences - there are about a half dozen other little things, but all in all Perl is a great language and runs well on all platforms.
Version 1.0 of our software *was* compatible with MacOS9. We dropped support for OS9 after that, due to the numerous limitations and problems with the outdated MacPerl. OSX has never been a problem, because it's just Unix and it comes with Perl 5.6.1.
However, now that MacPerl 5.6.1 is available, there is a good chance that we'll be able to get the product working on MacOS Classic again. I am starting work on it today!
Hooray for the MacPerl team!
Not on a big box but a smallish base, at eye height, with an infinitely flexible yet stable arm, surrounded by a nice frame.
"Infinitely flexible" is probably going a bit too far, don't you think? It goes up and down, left and right, and it tilts. Big whoop. Have you seen the fully articulated, counter-weighted arms that are used in medical lasers and other equipment? Now I'm not saying Apple's display needs that kind of flexibility, but they stopped just one tiny step short of what I believe would have been a perfect monitor mount. It needs to PIVOT.
Back around 1987-1989 Radius made a pivoting monochrome CRT for the Macintosh. It was absolutely brilliant. Wanna work on a full page Word document, turn it to portrait. Switch over to Dark Castle and turn it landscape. IIRC, you didn't even have to restart or change any settings, it would just resize the display automatically when you turned it.
I'm sure this idea must have come up when they were designing the iMac. Why on earth did they leave it out??
It used to be the only one was Lucent's Orinoco/EC - very expensive and not in stores.
There is now a product from Buffalo Technology which does this, call the Airstation Bridge
A lot of people are using these with our ethernet MP3 player. Everybody says the Airstation works great, and it's only about $160. I can't say I've used one yet, myself.
What's the difference between blue, red and green lasers?
Green laser pointers use an infra-red laser diode, with a yag crystal to double the frequency. Also, they increase the brightness of the beam by turning in on and off at about a 60/40 duty cycle, while driving the diode at a higher current than it could handle at 100% duty. You can actually see this by moving the dot back and forth quickly - it appears as a dashed line.
They're a neat toy if you've got $400 to burn (last I checked).
Here's a coil gun I found on google.
Instead of using fixed magnets to release the energy of the balls hitting each magnet in sccuession, this coil gun uses a series of timed pulses to accellerate the projectile down the length of a tube. That's a block of concrete in the photo, and I think the black spike in the top left corner is the projectile.
http://www.resonanceresearch.com/prod06.htm
a website made up of plagiarized portions of other providers terms of service
A lawyer recently informed me that copyright does not apply to legal documents (including terms of service and licenses). I was surprised at first, but then I realized that I've never seen a (c) on any such document.
So it's actually perfectly okay (and probably a good idea) to "steal" the best parts of other well written legal documents, rather than reinvent them. There is standard language for all of these things, so it would be pretty ridiculous to copyright them. It's not plagiarism.
spread throughout your application irregardless of vendor.
Regardless of what you may have heard, "irregardless" is not a word. See also: "irrespective".
My g/f in high school used to start her period on exactly the same day as all the other girls on her soccer team - amazing. I've also heard that girls often have their periods in sync with their mothers'. Has anyone formally attempted to relate this to the pendulum phenomenon?
"We don't care about the [Chinese government's] rules. It's none of Cisco's business."
Similar to how Mercedes or BMW didn't care much for what those giant ovens were used for in NAZI Germany
I know many jews who own (or would like to own) Mercedes and BMWs. Some people are intelligent enough not to prejudge others based on atrocities commited (or ignored) by their long deceased ancestors. I suppose you think everyone in Arkansas is a card carrying KKK member?
Mercedes and BMW have been around for quite a while, and much has changed. People die, but businesses can survive for centuries. It's not fair to assume that their hard working employees still sympathize with whoever ran the company decades ago.
PS I don't work for Benz or BMW.