..I use a vaio right now for a machine that has some semblence of a keyboard and can run GCC - and has some sort of warranty (e.g. isn't 10 years old:). I used to have a HP100LX with Turbo C++ on it, but that got too old.. one of these Jornadas running linux would make a GREAT little development platform that could run GCC; And I'd buy one tomorrow (are you listening HP?), doublely so if they could make it have some sort of battery adapter to take standard sized cells.
One of those machines makes a lot more sense for things like news reading, browsing, etc than my pilot - which is useful for PIM functions and games because it's always with me in a pocket. The combination of a palm and a jornada is something I've missed since I sold my 100LX.
I want to shut this thinking down now - HP had one of the best PIM packages I've ever used developed in house for their 100/200LX units, and porting that or implementing it in linux would not be that difficult. The Jornada is much more "general purpose" than a handheld device, and I suspect this is why WinCE is falling flat on it's face - I want to be able to do my own stuff, and WinCE is too limited (as is PalmOS, in this application, IMHO. I'd rather linux or even DOS (like the 100LX).
Actually, I think that recovering the current state of the art might take a few years, but assuming it was something like a giant EMP pulse that didn't destroy manufacturing equipment, it would be quite easy.
You would need to build analog control equipment first - this could be made from vaccuum tubes, which are easy to produce. While primitive, you could get a decent CnC machine setup to produce the majority of the parts and tools you'd need. Chemistry isn't affected, and much of chip design has a LOT to do with chemistry and lithography, which is dependant on controlling light. Once you can produce extremely primitive microprocessors, the process becomes exponential. You wouldn't need to do a LOT of the stuff that came along the way in the current development cycle; The knoweledge and engineering is there.
The big ones - the understanding of the physics - is what matters. Back in tha day, we didn't know you could make laser diodes. We didn't know how to mass produce ultra-fine chips. The simulation tools would have to be rewritten, yes, but that would take one or two years, not 10 or 20. The microprocessor has only been around for 30 years! People forget about that.
In short, I'm not worried.. I know how to write a compiler:). Most of the old analog tech could be made from scratch in a few months - much of it was, during World War II. Microwave communications, radar, were all developed at rapid paces once the physics were understood - and we know all the physics now, nasty as it might be.
And, just in case you needed a reason to take EE/Comp Eng over Computer Science!:)
The utility of these ports on BSD/Linux I can't really see (yet), given that much of the market is dominated by pretty low powered hardware (a la palm), and there isn't much of a need (imho) to duplicate the amazing job that Palm has done on PalmOS and in contributing to the developer community (Free tools rock, and the app base keeps them dominant). Lots of people would see differently, hey, whatever keeps you entertained!
The real use of these guys is on the HPC units like the HP 620 that have keyboards and large, high-res color screens. I'd love to replace my Sony Vaio with a HPC device from HP (long ago, I had a 100LX, and loved it). The keyboard lets me do more stuff - write code, the screen is big enough for X, etc. Windows CE is crap, though, and I can't (ever) see running it.
Good luck to these guys, and I hope I can get a full-fledged 1lb linux machine to code on soon:). Hoping someone releases a ultra-thin metal cased transmeta based unit a 8.5" x 11" form factor. That'd be sweet. CPU isn't as much as an issue as the ability to code for 6 hours on a charge, and not weigh down my backpack with batteries!
gets off the medium digitally. Unencoded. See where I'm going? The only way around this would be some kind of fancy analog cryptography. Yeah, right. Quality loss deluxe, I'd say.
This isn't really true.. right now it is, but I'm sure a fancy designer could put the decode circuitry and a DAC in the same package to have encypted digital in and unencrypted analog out. What all these groups miss is that if I have a high quality sound card and some good mastering software, I can take their noise-free analog signal and resample it, then encode that - given that the mp3 codecs are lossy, I don't think my untrained ears would hear much of a difference.
How? I don't know yet. What's my logic? Well, the kidney *originally* grew inside the person. What's stoppying the human body from doing it again? We, for the most part, have all the capabilities and resources to grow new organs from scratch. We did it in the womb, and I think it is lack of understanding and technology that allows us to do so now.
They're called Stem Cells, and you're right, newborn (aborted) fetuses are the only handy source of them that we have. Lots of people have issues with that.. I don't, but then again, I don't shoot doctors, either. The ability to produce more stem cells from other animals is being researched now. If you look at life on the cellular/genetic level, it's amazing how much in common we have with everything else - there really isn't all that much seperating you from the bug on the wall, except for those genes the encode for a big ass lump of neural tissue:).
There are other techniques that I find interesting too, like using templates made from lithographic processes (like in chips) to make tissues grow in layers, so you could manufacture a new kidney or whatever as needed.
Sex is more fun anyway. Anyway, the clone child will have no more or less difficulty than the second child, in your example? The process of cloning is not the problem, it is the nature of the parents!
Sex is a lot of fun, but my girlfriend might beg to differ about the rest of the mechanism for spawning more child processes:). You're right though - a fully cloned human is just like an identical twin. The part that'll be interesting is when you can clone a human with no head, and use growth hormones and vats to produce in quantity. You might not like it, but I'll happen. Those that are against that sort of thing have likely never watched anyone die because they couldn't get a organ transplant.
Like anything else, the technology of life is coming this way, and we're going to be using it, like it or not.. and once the rest of the tools catch up (e.g. being able to simulate protein folding, and simulating the creation of protiens from DNA) it'll be really interesting.
Personally, I'm waiting for my genetically engineered orange juice grown in vats. Hell of a lot more efficient than trees, and advanced biotech solves the world's food problems real quick like (tm).
Which should we do? Arrest everyone on Napster (I imagine its a misdemeanor), stop them by monitoring their machine via Carnivore, or write new legislation that is cognizant of the new problems brought about by the new technology? I opt for the latter.
I've got a different perspective on the whole matter of Peer-To-Peer copying. I'm all for it. I think that whether it's legal or not, the widespread availability of media has opened my eyes to whole different genres of music and culture, allowed me to experiment at little or no cost with independant music (some of the stuff I listen to would cost rediculous amounts of money imported from Europe), and because of this, encouraged me to spend money - on tangible things, like concerts, stickers, and t-shirts - not infinately reproduceable media. Really good music and games - and movies - I've even been inclined to buy (and buy it in a media that I can listen/watch forever, without endless royalties).
Another observation: I've been around computers for something like 14 years or so - and they've ALWAYS been used as tools to pass copyrighted media around to your friends at no charge. There's been the profiteering scum, yes - but they're quick to catch.
What I see happening is that shutting Napster down will be the worst thing the record industry ever did - because then a bunch of hackers are going to design a better, noncentralized, two way anonymous, global system like FreeNet, make it easy to use, and then you have the ultimate tool for freedom - or piracy, depending on how you look at it. Properly designed, it becomes near impossible to track people down, and could become part of every internet enabled OS out there. (I suspect this is what initiatives like Windows XP are about - I hope that product flops worse than DivX). This is also why people are horny to get protections on hard drives before we start talking about terabytes instead of gigabytes - although, I suspect they're not going to be successful.
Even better is the technology developed by Zero Knowledge. Too bad it's not free, but I like their tech - a lot.
Interesting times ahead. What is the law, anyhow? If the majority of the population decides that something is OK and acceptable, then it's going to be legal at that point in time - Yes, I'm all aware about slavery and WWII Germany - but all that was legal at the time, too. Comparing copying music to killing people is a little extreme, too. The government exists for the people, and by the people (in the USA, anyhow..). Not for the corporations, by the corporations. Profits or no profits, that's not what it's about - sorry.
Information wants to be free, and two-way anonymous transfer & peer-to-peer copying means that it's about to be.
Got my hopes up there for a second; I thought it would be fiction of some sort about the linux movement bringing down Microsoft (perhaps a history what-if scenario). Heh, that wouldn't be a bad premise to write a book, now that I think about it. Maybe that'll keep Katz busy for awhile and outta our hair?
Watcha say, John? Try some fiction for a chance? (Hell, original content, even:).
Get used to it. We're in for a wild ride.
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Spidergoats
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· Score: 4
Before I start: All of this stuff is going to happen in the future, because if you Americans don't do it, us Canadians will, or the Europeans will, or the Japaneese, or the Chinese, or the Russians. Just because it doesn't fit into your morality doesn't mean much - welcome to globalization, and there isn't diddly you can do about it. All of my arguements follow from this point; You can debate this, but I see it as fact.
This is unrelated, but growing industrial hemp is a crime., but it's perfectly legal in Canada, about 40 miles north of the border. Take a stand on your government's international joke, er, war on drugs, or shut up and move. Listening to americans whine about the Wo(s)D when they all obediantly piss in a bottle to get a job is amusing.
Raising genetically altered mammals for industrial purposes is cool
You ain't seen nothing yet. I picked up a couple books on genetics at Chapters last weekend, just to see what's changed since the last time I took a biology couse (about 8 years ago, in high school). The amount of information being collected on how living organism works is absolutely incredible. People are beginning to apply lithographic techniques - commonly used to make chips - as templates to grow tissues with the ultra-fine blood vessles that before were impossible to grow artificially.
The nanotech people should take a good hard look at nature's nanotech - cells, viruses and how they work - I think that a lot of these advances are happening because engineers are finally getting the tools to work with life. It's potential benefits to mankind are absolutely amazing, and some might argue the risk is too high - maybe so - but someone, somewhere, IS going to do this stuff, because the benefits are too high not to. Chemicals and drugs that cost a fortune can be made cheaply and easily. Biological materials - like orange juice - can be mass produced in a factory, rather than pollute the earth with fertilizier and other pesticides.
Did I get something wrong here? Because the longer I think about it, the sicker I get...
Don't be ignorant and pick up some books and start reading. A lot of the panic out there is by people that don't understand the science - hell, mutations happen all the time and are part of, and required for, all life. It's just like anything else - I'm sure there were people that thought electricity was the work of the devil, and the good 'ol christian right had something to say about the printing press back in the day, too.
I think that by understanding and engineering the base principles of life, we'll be able to understand and evaluate the risks much more intelligently, for the benefit of all of man. These advances are going to happen; Find a way to deal with it. Pick up a book and learn about your good buddy, DNA, and cellular metabolism. A lot has changed since I last looked.
You can buy kits - check out Information Unlimited
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DIY Railgun Projects
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· Score: 2
I've dealt with these people before to get some high voltage supplies and pieces. They sell all sorts of stuff from Information Unlimited - they're run as a mad-scientist like outfit, and they have all sorts of nifty stuff. If you like railguns, coil guns, EMP guns, water explosion, lattice cracking, etc etc.. this is the place for you. Some of the stuff isn't cheap, but everything that I've ordered from them has worked reasonably well.
Anyhow, there's lots of people working on this. Nobody's made one more efficient than a.44 magnum though:)
Lots of people that do what I do don't bother to persue their Professional Engineer status once they've graduated - there are good arguements against it, and some might argue that it doesn't get you very much for a lot of hassle - reviews of logbooks, meetings with P.Eng's to discuss your work, annual dues, etc. I graduated from an electrical engineering program, and proceeded to register with the provincial engineering board here (PE status in the US isn't as recognized, I don't think, as P.Eng up here).
At any rate, the reason that I did this was so that people can look at my business card someday, see the P.Eng, and know that they have a good change of dealing with someone reputable, who won't screw them over, and will do what they said that they would - in short, someone who is accountable for their work.
Right now, the computer consulting industry is a free for all. I can see that changing in the near future, or more likely, after the next big recession happens and people start to look -a lot- more carefully at where their computer IT dollars are going.
I do know that personally, I'm hoping that the industry does become more regulated, because I've seen some real messes that didn't have to happen out there. Regardless of my opinion however, I think higher standards and certifications will be demanded as the industry matures. I also suspect that the professional engineering associations - who are empowered by law to regulate a lot of fields - will play a much bigger and more proactive role in the future.
The BT8x8 cards are not particularly suited to capturing video of any length, since they have no hardware compression, and reliable realtime software MPEG-1/MPEG-2/MJPEG compression is not viable, AFAIK under Linux (Maybe the Alpha's vector processor would make this possible?)
No, this is incorrect. My ATI TV Wonder PCI (bt878) is more than capable of realtime mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 (less extensively tested than mpeg-1, since the native software only supports mpeg 1) encoding on a duron 600 oc'd to 900. It does so quite reliably, but I haven't been able to get the card running in linux.
If youre looking for a card to capture video, look for something a little more pwerful with an onboard hardware compresion engine.
My $80 Duron does a great job with mpeg 1 with cycles to spare right now, if you're just going after NTSC television capture.
If you've managed to get the PCI bt878 based ATI TV wonder working with linux, could you tell me how and what software you were using? I've tried everything to get this card detected by the kernel, with absolutely no luck. That would make my day, bigtime, because I have to leave my machine on in windows to tape shows during the day.:)
Anyone else had success with this card? (ATI TV Wonder PCI)
Re:Microsoft can't do anything about free..
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Linux Is Going Down
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Problem one: when all the Linux companies go "Tits up", hardware companies will no longer feel a need to release a few drivers for their products. They are only catering to the niche right now because they think that niche is growing.
Almost none of the drivers I have are written by companies. The best companies ever do is release register information, and sadly, a lot of the time it's reverse engineering work that gets things running. I don't buy this arguement for a second, and you should have a poke around in the kernel source sometime. Companies that are friendly to linux now have largely ALWAYS been friendly to linux, and I don't see any reason to think that anything more than goodwill is the cause - I doubt linux support affects huge percentages of their general revenue (linux users excepted).
Problem three: if we lose these companies, we will be losing many of Linux's best programmers. Reasoning: while some of the better ones are hobbists, a lot of the best coders work for money.
I work for money; I even make a pretty good wage. Even to the point of developing on microsoft APIs and microsoft platforms! I can say that some of the best code I've ever written has been for free or with an academic interest, and had very little to do with money. Most of the code I write for work is pretty mundane. This arguement doesn't hold weight. Back-in-tha-day, there was no commercial incentive, and there was still plenty of development. Although, XFree and Linux sucked more then. The suck less now, and will suck even less in the future! I love it!
They are coming to Linux not only because they see a development challenge, but a monetary opportunity through companies.
I laugh at you loudly. There are few if ANY jobs out there developing linux software. Mail me some information. They don't exist (relative to the opportunities doing embedded work, windows work, or generic network code, which I guess could be done in linux, but not exclusively for linux). Don't underestimate the 100-million-plus seat windows market, that's why you don't see games for Windows; Nice or not, we're not statistically relevant in that game.
Problem three: You seem to have many hours a day where you can code programs to give away for free. I don't. Most of us don't. Right now I'm going to college, but even now I'm swamped with work and expenses necessary to keep food on my table. I can only imagine it getting harder when I leave. That's why I can't help you in your idealistic ways.
I have very little time to work on free projects; That's why I hand stuff around - maybe someone else can do something with the little tidbit I wrote. Much of what I do is of little interest to anyone but myself - playing with genetic algorithms and 3D, for example. I do it for the love of the art, not the money. Linux was written by people that did it for the love of the art, and would do so regardless. There are very few things in this world I have any natural aptitude for, and coding is one of them. Why waste that gift?
That's why I can't help you in your idealistic ways.
Maybe I'm idealistic, but it doesn't change my original statement that if all the linux commercial involvement went tits up, very little of what I do would be affected in Linux. Linux exists outside of the traditional commercial world, and I see no problem with that. It will continue to evolve, and improve, with out without Redhat, VA Linux, etc. That's why we'll win (Eventually).
Microsoft can't do anything about free..
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Linux Is Going Down
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· Score: 5
I'm shocked that people that high up in Microsoft and other "consultancy" firms completely miss what Linux is about. It's not ABOUT money. It never WAS about money, and frankly, redhat, VA Linux, and everything in between can go tits-up tomorrow and it won't make a lick of difference to me. I'm sure there'd be a lot of unhappy investors - but let me say it again, Linux is not about money.
Linus Torvalds did not write linux because he wanted to be rich - although a nice side effect - he wrote it because he wanted to do something; he wanted an operating system that just sucked a little less than all of the other ones out there. That's the beauty of the GPL. That's why I give code away - It did what I wanted, and if someone thinks that it sucks less, then all the power to them!
I use linux because it does what I want, and so do a lot of other people. Linux won't lose because a bunch of ill concieved business models go up in smoke - all that GPL'd code will be there, waiting for the next Linus Torvalds to hack on it and make it suck less. Those drivers weren't written by people who wanted money; they were written by people that just wanted their hardware to work. There's no rocket science in there - just a pile of time.
Unless microsoft is proposing that they ban free development - free as in speech - then there's a segment of the market that they'll never, ever get - and that's the real linux mainstream, the core of people that use it because it sucks less and makes their lives easier. Does anything else really matter? If you're happy with MS, fine. Enjoy. I'm not.
It is hard to imagine
understanding of the process of life coming from understanding chemical reactions
of a carbon atom.
Perhaps it is arrogant to think that there is something special about life, too. The context for the quote was that the carbon atom is extremely special in it's ability to self-organize into complicated, long chains and molecules. That's why Organic Chemistry is special - it's a whole field onto itself. The building blocks of life - DNA, RNA, Amino Acids - all appear within the context of the study of the carbon atom and it's reactions.
Intelligent life, now, is a whole different matter. We're not sure how this "conciousness" thing works:).
..that I once read went something like "someday, we'll begin to see life as another property of the carbon atom", or something along those lines. You'd think that organic chemistry itself might provide some clues:)
What is Yahoo! anyhow? If we throw away the questionable multi-million dollar (billion?) market cap, all the fancy media sources like reuters news (of questionable value, anyhow), you're left with some very expensive scripts, some high volume servers, the mother of all internet connections.. and a list of links to other people's sites.
Corporate control of the internet? Don't make me laugh. You could hack together something to emulate Yahoo and have moderated links, much like NewHoo! is now (ironically, it was bought. Need a GPL!. But, please, don't make me laugh. You could rebuild a much better open directory just as quick. The only people that would be affected by Yahoo! being acquired are the masses of people that are pretty content with AOL anyhow, and if strained, pre-chewed media content is what you want, then they got a lock on that.
Yahoo! in 1994? 1995? was a much different place than it is now, and it was a lot more true to it's roots in the grassroots internet movement. To say that this could be coopted by coroporations misses the point; The grassroots will just move. To a large degree, it already has - and for the most part, I stopped using Yahoo a long time ago, and I got new haunts on the 'net - this being one of them.
. I do not agree that this is enough to compensate for the disadvantages of an underclass environment or family troubles.
Those issues are not caused by a lack of computing technology - nor is it the image being presented by Katz. If you live in such an environment, your first concern is to get out of it - and this has zero to do with the issue at hand. Government handouts are NOT the answer to dealing with poverty; Teaching people responsibility and offering education is. You can't force it down their throats, and I think a lot of people forget that.
I'm not from the USA, and every now and then I forget about how bad things are down there, but 20 miles north of your border, the situtation seems to be a little better.
My point is that if you life isn't fucked up, and you're poor, you can get access to decent computing tools at little or no cost IF YOU WANT TO. If your life is fucked up, then you fix that first. The issues are unrelated to one another. If you don't want to do anything, though, then I don't have much pity for you.
Maybe you're talking about people who don't really care that much about computers, but nowadays, I'd argue that computers have never been more accessable to poor people than ever - if they're interested - and that your arguement is completely and uterly WRONG.
When I was growing up, my parents didn't think computers were all that big a deal, and didn't have a lot of money. I managed to cobble, scrimp, save, and work to get a C64. Once I had that, I learned most of the concepts that I have today - how computers work, how to do low level programming, etc etc etc. I didn't even have a disk drive!
Look at what you can do today. You can get a 486 system for almost nothing - nevermind a new PC with internet access for a couple hundred bucks. I would guess with $200 or even $100 you could get a cobbled together 486, and put linux on it. Presto! That's ALL YOU NEED to learn about computer technology. A 486, linux, and time. You could even get a network on the go if you're good at finding parts (you can get 386's free, in a lot of places, if you poke around). From there, finding your first job is probably not far away. Unless we're talking about the destitute poor, who aren't eating. But that's far and away another issue completely.
I don't think this has anything to do with access to computer technology, but a bunch of people whining and looking for a problem that isn't there. Exposure to computers plants the seed; If there's a desire, that seed will grow.
If you're interested in actually hacking these boxes as opposed to blatant theft of service (not much of a distinction, but, hey, we all gotta rationalize), then you probably don't have much to worry about. I suspect that the 2% that weren't affected were using emulators of the smartcard, quite likely running their own software that they themselves wrote to hack the dish.
*grin* There's gotta be one helluva pissed pile of pirates out there though. The GAME OVER thing is just classic, too, eh! heh heh.
Perhaps what some clever people should come up with is a way to shoehorn in a traditional X86 32bit CPU (P3, Athlon..) either into the motherboard, as an add-on PCI card, or through a custom slot (much like the Amigas had for their processor card upgrades). This would allow you to have some way to execute 32bit code at a reasonable speed, and could let the core architects work on a better 64 bit CPU instead, maybe.
Although I guess you could just have your old box, anyway, since this will probably require a 1kg heatsink and new case anyhow *chuckle*.
Disclaimer: I work for iMagicTV, and we've been developing this stuff for some time, and have a bunch of major customers. If you're interested in how this stuff works, not just from the customer perspective but the backend stuff that the telco is running too.
This is nothing new, and has been available in middle-of-nowhere Atlantic Canada for some time, but since we're not part of the USA (yet), it must not count.
It WOULD be a feat if they got 60 channels simultaneously multicast over DSL, but that's just not possible. They have a bunch of seperate streams that you can tune into.
Another deterrent is the excruciatingly slow encoding process. Ripping an average DVD to DivX takes anywhere between 18-30 hours on my 850mhz Wintel box and the end product resides on 2 cd's. Sure, I've got a copy of the movie, but do I really want to be interrupted in the middle because I need to swap cd's ?
You're doing something horribly wrong. My Duron 600@900Mhz can encode Mission Impossible: II in about 6-7 hours. A long time, yes, but not 18 hours!
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One of those machines makes a lot more sense for things like news reading, browsing, etc than my pilot - which is useful for PIM functions and games because it's always with me in a pocket. The combination of a palm and a jornada is something I've missed since I sold my 100LX.
I want to shut this thinking down now - HP had one of the best PIM packages I've ever used developed in house for their 100/200LX units, and porting that or implementing it in linux would not be that difficult. The Jornada is much more "general purpose" than a handheld device, and I suspect this is why WinCE is falling flat on it's face - I want to be able to do my own stuff, and WinCE is too limited (as is PalmOS, in this application, IMHO. I'd rather linux or even DOS (like the 100LX).
Go HP!
Actually, I think that recovering the current state of the art might take a few years, but assuming it was something like a giant EMP pulse that didn't destroy manufacturing equipment, it would be quite easy.
You would need to build analog control equipment first - this could be made from vaccuum tubes, which are easy to produce. While primitive, you could get a decent CnC machine setup to produce the majority of the parts and tools you'd need. Chemistry isn't affected, and much of chip design has a LOT to do with chemistry and lithography, which is dependant on controlling light. Once you can produce extremely primitive microprocessors, the process becomes exponential. You wouldn't need to do a LOT of the stuff that came along the way in the current development cycle; The knoweledge and engineering is there.
The big ones - the understanding of the physics - is what matters. Back in tha day, we didn't know you could make laser diodes. We didn't know how to mass produce ultra-fine chips. The simulation tools would have to be rewritten, yes, but that would take one or two years, not 10 or 20. The microprocessor has only been around for 30 years! People forget about that.
In short, I'm not worried.. I know how to write a compiler :). Most of the old analog tech could be made from scratch in a few months - much of it was, during World War II. Microwave communications, radar, were all developed at rapid paces once the physics were understood - and we know all the physics now, nasty as it might be.
And, just in case you needed a reason to take EE/Comp Eng over Computer Science! :)
The utility of these ports on BSD/Linux I can't really see (yet), given that much of the market is dominated by pretty low powered hardware (a la palm), and there isn't much of a need (imho) to duplicate the amazing job that Palm has done on PalmOS and in contributing to the developer community (Free tools rock, and the app base keeps them dominant). Lots of people would see differently, hey, whatever keeps you entertained!
The real use of these guys is on the HPC units like the HP 620 that have keyboards and large, high-res color screens. I'd love to replace my Sony Vaio with a HPC device from HP (long ago, I had a 100LX, and loved it). The keyboard lets me do more stuff - write code, the screen is big enough for X, etc. Windows CE is crap, though, and I can't (ever) see running it.
Good luck to these guys, and I hope I can get a full-fledged 1lb linux machine to code on soon :). Hoping someone releases a ultra-thin metal cased transmeta based unit a 8.5" x 11" form factor. That'd be sweet. CPU isn't as much as an issue as the ability to code for 6 hours on a charge, and not weigh down my backpack with batteries!
gets off the medium digitally. Unencoded. See where I'm going? The only way around this would be some kind of fancy analog cryptography. Yeah, right. Quality loss deluxe, I'd say.
This isn't really true.. right now it is, but I'm sure a fancy designer could put the decode circuitry and a DAC in the same package to have encypted digital in and unencrypted analog out. What all these groups miss is that if I have a high quality sound card and some good mastering software, I can take their noise-free analog signal and resample it, then encode that - given that the mp3 codecs are lossy, I don't think my untrained ears would hear much of a difference.
Whadda I know anyway :)
How? I don't know yet. What's my logic? Well, the kidney *originally* grew inside the person. What's stoppying the human body from doing it again? We, for the most part, have all the capabilities and resources to grow new organs from scratch. We did it in the womb, and I think it is lack of understanding and technology that allows us to do so now.
They're called Stem Cells, and you're right, newborn (aborted) fetuses are the only handy source of them that we have. Lots of people have issues with that.. I don't, but then again, I don't shoot doctors, either. The ability to produce more stem cells from other animals is being researched now. If you look at life on the cellular/genetic level, it's amazing how much in common we have with everything else - there really isn't all that much seperating you from the bug on the wall, except for those genes the encode for a big ass lump of neural tissue :).
There are other techniques that I find interesting too, like using templates made from lithographic processes (like in chips) to make tissues grow in layers, so you could manufacture a new kidney or whatever as needed.
Sex is more fun anyway. Anyway, the clone child will have no more or less difficulty than the second child, in your example? The process of cloning is not the problem, it is the nature of the parents!
Sex is a lot of fun, but my girlfriend might beg to differ about the rest of the mechanism for spawning more child processes :). You're right though - a fully cloned human is just like an identical twin. The part that'll be interesting is when you can clone a human with no head, and use growth hormones and vats to produce in quantity. You might not like it, but I'll happen. Those that are against that sort of thing have likely never watched anyone die because they couldn't get a organ transplant.
Like anything else, the technology of life is coming this way, and we're going to be using it, like it or not.. and once the rest of the tools catch up (e.g. being able to simulate protein folding, and simulating the creation of protiens from DNA) it'll be really interesting.
Personally, I'm waiting for my genetically engineered orange juice grown in vats. Hell of a lot more efficient than trees, and advanced biotech solves the world's food problems real quick like (tm).
Which should we do? Arrest everyone on Napster (I imagine its a misdemeanor), stop them by monitoring their machine via Carnivore, or write new legislation that is cognizant of the new problems brought about by the new technology? I opt for the latter.
I've got a different perspective on the whole matter of Peer-To-Peer copying. I'm all for it. I think that whether it's legal or not, the widespread availability of media has opened my eyes to whole different genres of music and culture, allowed me to experiment at little or no cost with independant music (some of the stuff I listen to would cost rediculous amounts of money imported from Europe), and because of this, encouraged me to spend money - on tangible things, like concerts, stickers, and t-shirts - not infinately reproduceable media. Really good music and games - and movies - I've even been inclined to buy (and buy it in a media that I can listen/watch forever, without endless royalties).
Another observation: I've been around computers for something like 14 years or so - and they've ALWAYS been used as tools to pass copyrighted media around to your friends at no charge. There's been the profiteering scum, yes - but they're quick to catch.
What I see happening is that shutting Napster down will be the worst thing the record industry ever did - because then a bunch of hackers are going to design a better, noncentralized, two way anonymous, global system like FreeNet, make it easy to use, and then you have the ultimate tool for freedom - or piracy, depending on how you look at it. Properly designed, it becomes near impossible to track people down, and could become part of every internet enabled OS out there. (I suspect this is what initiatives like Windows XP are about - I hope that product flops worse than DivX). This is also why people are horny to get protections on hard drives before we start talking about terabytes instead of gigabytes - although, I suspect they're not going to be successful.
Even better is the technology developed by Zero Knowledge. Too bad it's not free, but I like their tech - a lot.
Interesting times ahead. What is the law, anyhow? If the majority of the population decides that something is OK and acceptable, then it's going to be legal at that point in time - Yes, I'm all aware about slavery and WWII Germany - but all that was legal at the time, too. Comparing copying music to killing people is a little extreme, too. The government exists for the people, and by the people (in the USA, anyhow..). Not for the corporations, by the corporations. Profits or no profits, that's not what it's about - sorry.
Information wants to be free, and two-way anonymous transfer & peer-to-peer copying means that it's about to be.
Got my hopes up there for a second; I thought it would be fiction of some sort about the linux movement bringing down Microsoft (perhaps a history what-if scenario). Heh, that wouldn't be a bad premise to write a book, now that I think about it. Maybe that'll keep Katz busy for awhile and outta our hair?
Watcha say, John? Try some fiction for a chance? (Hell, original content, even :).
Before I start: All of this stuff is going to happen in the future, because if you Americans don't do it, us Canadians will, or the Europeans will, or the Japaneese, or the Chinese, or the Russians. Just because it doesn't fit into your morality doesn't mean much - welcome to globalization, and there isn't diddly you can do about it. All of my arguements follow from this point; You can debate this, but I see it as fact.
This is unrelated, but growing industrial hemp is a crime., but it's perfectly legal in Canada, about 40 miles north of the border. Take a stand on your government's international joke, er, war on drugs, or shut up and move. Listening to americans whine about the Wo(s)D when they all obediantly piss in a bottle to get a job is amusing.
Raising genetically altered mammals for industrial purposes is cool
You ain't seen nothing yet. I picked up a couple books on genetics at Chapters last weekend, just to see what's changed since the last time I took a biology couse (about 8 years ago, in high school). The amount of information being collected on how living organism works is absolutely incredible. People are beginning to apply lithographic techniques - commonly used to make chips - as templates to grow tissues with the ultra-fine blood vessles that before were impossible to grow artificially.
The nanotech people should take a good hard look at nature's nanotech - cells, viruses and how they work - I think that a lot of these advances are happening because engineers are finally getting the tools to work with life. It's potential benefits to mankind are absolutely amazing, and some might argue the risk is too high - maybe so - but someone, somewhere, IS going to do this stuff, because the benefits are too high not to. Chemicals and drugs that cost a fortune can be made cheaply and easily. Biological materials - like orange juice - can be mass produced in a factory, rather than pollute the earth with fertilizier and other pesticides.
Did I get something wrong here? Because the longer I think about it, the sicker I get...
Don't be ignorant and pick up some books and start reading. A lot of the panic out there is by people that don't understand the science - hell, mutations happen all the time and are part of, and required for, all life. It's just like anything else - I'm sure there were people that thought electricity was the work of the devil, and the good 'ol christian right had something to say about the printing press back in the day, too.
I think that by understanding and engineering the base principles of life, we'll be able to understand and evaluate the risks much more intelligently, for the benefit of all of man. These advances are going to happen; Find a way to deal with it. Pick up a book and learn about your good buddy, DNA, and cellular metabolism. A lot has changed since I last looked.
I've dealt with these people before to get some high voltage supplies and pieces. They sell all sorts of stuff from Information Unlimited - they're run as a mad-scientist like outfit, and they have all sorts of nifty stuff. If you like railguns, coil guns, EMP guns, water explosion, lattice cracking, etc etc.. this is the place for you. Some of the stuff isn't cheap, but everything that I've ordered from them has worked reasonably well.
Anyhow, there's lots of people working on this. Nobody's made one more efficient than a .44 magnum though :)
Lots of people that do what I do don't bother to persue their Professional Engineer status once they've graduated - there are good arguements against it, and some might argue that it doesn't get you very much for a lot of hassle - reviews of logbooks, meetings with P.Eng's to discuss your work, annual dues, etc. I graduated from an electrical engineering program, and proceeded to register with the provincial engineering board here (PE status in the US isn't as recognized, I don't think, as P.Eng up here).
At any rate, the reason that I did this was so that people can look at my business card someday, see the P.Eng, and know that they have a good change of dealing with someone reputable, who won't screw them over, and will do what they said that they would - in short, someone who is accountable for their work.
Right now, the computer consulting industry is a free for all. I can see that changing in the near future, or more likely, after the next big recession happens and people start to look -a lot- more carefully at where their computer IT dollars are going.
I do know that personally, I'm hoping that the industry does become more regulated, because I've seen some real messes that didn't have to happen out there. Regardless of my opinion however, I think higher standards and certifications will be demanded as the industry matures. I also suspect that the professional engineering associations - who are empowered by law to regulate a lot of fields - will play a much bigger and more proactive role in the future.
Thanks dude - you make my week. :)
The BT8x8 cards are not particularly suited to capturing video of any length, since they have no hardware compression, and reliable realtime software MPEG-1/MPEG-2/MJPEG compression is not viable, AFAIK under Linux (Maybe the Alpha's vector processor would make this possible?)
No, this is incorrect. My ATI TV Wonder PCI (bt878) is more than capable of realtime mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 (less extensively tested than mpeg-1, since the native software only supports mpeg 1) encoding on a duron 600 oc'd to 900. It does so quite reliably, but I haven't been able to get the card running in linux.
If youre looking for a card to capture video, look for something a little more pwerful with an onboard hardware compresion engine.
My $80 Duron does a great job with mpeg 1 with cycles to spare right now, if you're just going after NTSC television capture.
If you've managed to get the PCI bt878 based ATI TV wonder working with linux, could you tell me how and what software you were using? I've tried everything to get this card detected by the kernel, with absolutely no luck. That would make my day, bigtime, because I have to leave my machine on in windows to tape shows during the day. :)
Anyone else had success with this card? (ATI TV Wonder PCI)
Problem one: when all the Linux companies go "Tits up", hardware companies will no longer feel a need to release a few drivers for their products. They are only catering to the niche right now because they think that niche is growing.
Almost none of the drivers I have are written by companies. The best companies ever do is release register information, and sadly, a lot of the time it's reverse engineering work that gets things running. I don't buy this arguement for a second, and you should have a poke around in the kernel source sometime. Companies that are friendly to linux now have largely ALWAYS been friendly to linux, and I don't see any reason to think that anything more than goodwill is the cause - I doubt linux support affects huge percentages of their general revenue (linux users excepted).
Problem three: if we lose these companies, we will be losing many of Linux's best programmers. Reasoning: while some of the better ones are hobbists, a lot of the best coders work for money.
I work for money; I even make a pretty good wage. Even to the point of developing on microsoft APIs and microsoft platforms! I can say that some of the best code I've ever written has been for free or with an academic interest, and had very little to do with money. Most of the code I write for work is pretty mundane. This arguement doesn't hold weight. Back-in-tha-day, there was no commercial incentive, and there was still plenty of development. Although, XFree and Linux sucked more then. The suck less now, and will suck even less in the future! I love it!
They are coming to Linux not only because they see a development challenge, but a monetary opportunity through companies.
I laugh at you loudly. There are few if ANY jobs out there developing linux software. Mail me some information. They don't exist (relative to the opportunities doing embedded work, windows work, or generic network code, which I guess could be done in linux, but not exclusively for linux). Don't underestimate the 100-million-plus seat windows market, that's why you don't see games for Windows; Nice or not, we're not statistically relevant in that game.
Problem three: You seem to have many hours a day where you can code programs to give away for free. I don't. Most of us don't. Right now I'm going to college, but even now I'm swamped with work and expenses necessary to keep food on my table. I can only imagine it getting harder when I leave. That's why I can't help you in your idealistic ways.
I have very little time to work on free projects; That's why I hand stuff around - maybe someone else can do something with the little tidbit I wrote. Much of what I do is of little interest to anyone but myself - playing with genetic algorithms and 3D, for example. I do it for the love of the art, not the money. Linux was written by people that did it for the love of the art, and would do so regardless. There are very few things in this world I have any natural aptitude for, and coding is one of them. Why waste that gift?
That's why I can't help you in your idealistic ways.
Maybe I'm idealistic, but it doesn't change my original statement that if all the linux commercial involvement went tits up, very little of what I do would be affected in Linux. Linux exists outside of the traditional commercial world, and I see no problem with that. It will continue to evolve, and improve, with out without Redhat, VA Linux, etc. That's why we'll win (Eventually).
I'm shocked that people that high up in Microsoft and other "consultancy" firms completely miss what Linux is about. It's not ABOUT money. It never WAS about money, and frankly, redhat, VA Linux, and everything in between can go tits-up tomorrow and it won't make a lick of difference to me. I'm sure there'd be a lot of unhappy investors - but let me say it again, Linux is not about money.
Linus Torvalds did not write linux because he wanted to be rich - although a nice side effect - he wrote it because he wanted to do something; he wanted an operating system that just sucked a little less than all of the other ones out there. That's the beauty of the GPL. That's why I give code away - It did what I wanted, and if someone thinks that it sucks less, then all the power to them!
I use linux because it does what I want, and so do a lot of other people. Linux won't lose because a bunch of ill concieved business models go up in smoke - all that GPL'd code will be there, waiting for the next Linus Torvalds to hack on it and make it suck less. Those drivers weren't written by people who wanted money; they were written by people that just wanted their hardware to work. There's no rocket science in there - just a pile of time.
Unless microsoft is proposing that they ban free development - free as in speech - then there's a segment of the market that they'll never, ever get - and that's the real linux mainstream, the core of people that use it because it sucks less and makes their lives easier. Does anything else really matter? If you're happy with MS, fine. Enjoy. I'm not.
It is hard to imagine understanding of the process of life coming from understanding chemical reactions of a carbon atom.
Perhaps it is arrogant to think that there is something special about life, too. The context for the quote was that the carbon atom is extremely special in it's ability to self-organize into complicated, long chains and molecules. That's why Organic Chemistry is special - it's a whole field onto itself. The building blocks of life - DNA, RNA, Amino Acids - all appear within the context of the study of the carbon atom and it's reactions.
Intelligent life, now, is a whole different matter. We're not sure how this "conciousness" thing works :).
Didn't say it was my only haunt, now, did I. Rather depressing how the cycle goes, though, isn't it?
What is Yahoo! anyhow? If we throw away the questionable multi-million dollar (billion?) market cap, all the fancy media sources like reuters news (of questionable value, anyhow), you're left with some very expensive scripts, some high volume servers, the mother of all internet connections.. and a list of links to other people's sites.
Corporate control of the internet? Don't make me laugh. You could hack together something to emulate Yahoo and have moderated links, much like NewHoo! is now (ironically, it was bought. Need a GPL!. But, please, don't make me laugh. You could rebuild a much better open directory just as quick. The only people that would be affected by Yahoo! being acquired are the masses of people that are pretty content with AOL anyhow, and if strained, pre-chewed media content is what you want, then they got a lock on that.
Yahoo! in 1994? 1995? was a much different place than it is now, and it was a lot more true to it's roots in the grassroots internet movement. To say that this could be coopted by coroporations misses the point; The grassroots will just move. To a large degree, it already has - and for the most part, I stopped using Yahoo a long time ago, and I got new haunts on the 'net - this being one of them.
Just some observations.
. I do not agree that this is enough to compensate for the disadvantages of an underclass environment or family troubles.
Those issues are not caused by a lack of computing technology - nor is it the image being presented by Katz. If you live in such an environment, your first concern is to get out of it - and this has zero to do with the issue at hand. Government handouts are NOT the answer to dealing with poverty; Teaching people responsibility and offering education is. You can't force it down their throats, and I think a lot of people forget that.
I'm not from the USA, and every now and then I forget about how bad things are down there, but 20 miles north of your border, the situtation seems to be a little better.
My point is that if you life isn't fucked up, and you're poor, you can get access to decent computing tools at little or no cost IF YOU WANT TO. If your life is fucked up, then you fix that first. The issues are unrelated to one another. If you don't want to do anything, though, then I don't have much pity for you.
Maybe you're talking about people who don't really care that much about computers, but nowadays, I'd argue that computers have never been more accessable to poor people than ever - if they're interested - and that your arguement is completely and uterly WRONG.
When I was growing up, my parents didn't think computers were all that big a deal, and didn't have a lot of money. I managed to cobble, scrimp, save, and work to get a C64. Once I had that, I learned most of the concepts that I have today - how computers work, how to do low level programming, etc etc etc. I didn't even have a disk drive!
Look at what you can do today. You can get a 486 system for almost nothing - nevermind a new PC with internet access for a couple hundred bucks. I would guess with $200 or even $100 you could get a cobbled together 486, and put linux on it. Presto! That's ALL YOU NEED to learn about computer technology. A 486, linux, and time. You could even get a network on the go if you're good at finding parts (you can get 386's free, in a lot of places, if you poke around). From there, finding your first job is probably not far away. Unless we're talking about the destitute poor, who aren't eating. But that's far and away another issue completely.
I don't think this has anything to do with access to computer technology, but a bunch of people whining and looking for a problem that isn't there. Exposure to computers plants the seed; If there's a desire, that seed will grow.
If you're interested in actually hacking these boxes as opposed to blatant theft of service (not much of a distinction, but, hey, we all gotta rationalize), then you probably don't have much to worry about. I suspect that the 2% that weren't affected were using emulators of the smartcard, quite likely running their own software that they themselves wrote to hack the dish.
*grin* There's gotta be one helluva pissed pile of pirates out there though. The GAME OVER thing is just classic, too, eh! heh heh.
Perhaps what some clever people should come up with is a way to shoehorn in a traditional X86 32bit CPU (P3, Athlon..) either into the motherboard, as an add-on PCI card, or through a custom slot (much like the Amigas had for their processor card upgrades). This would allow you to have some way to execute 32bit code at a reasonable speed, and could let the core architects work on a better 64 bit CPU instead, maybe.
Although I guess you could just have your old box, anyway, since this will probably require a 1kg heatsink and new case anyhow *chuckle*.
Disclaimer: I work for iMagicTV, and we've been developing this stuff for some time, and have a bunch of major customers. If you're interested in how this stuff works, not just from the customer perspective but the backend stuff that the telco is running too.
This is nothing new, and has been available in middle-of-nowhere Atlantic Canada for some time, but since we're not part of the USA (yet), it must not count.
It WOULD be a feat if they got 60 channels simultaneously multicast over DSL, but that's just not possible. They have a bunch of seperate streams that you can tune into.
Another deterrent is the excruciatingly slow encoding process. Ripping an average DVD to DivX takes anywhere between 18-30 hours on my 850mhz Wintel box and the end product resides on 2 cd's. Sure, I've got a copy of the movie, but do I really want to be interrupted in the middle because I need to swap cd's ?
You're doing something horribly wrong. My Duron 600@900Mhz can encode Mission Impossible: II in about 6-7 hours. A long time, yes, but not 18 hours!