Someone better not tell this guy that cell towers are omnidirectional so he'll experience that radiation regardless.
But the radiation is subject to an inverse-square law. A high-power source at a considerable distance (the tower) can give this guy less radiation than a low-power source at a close distance (her cell phone), as Opportunist's dad pointed out.
As an example: the guy is probably in a near-rural area, if he's trying to get away from radiation, on the outskirts of town. In hilly country, Wikipedia says a rural area can get a maximum of 5-8km. Let's say he's 5km away. (This is Santa Fe, so it's not exactly hill country, but it's probably not exactly totally rural either.) Let's also say the tower is using the regulatory maximum of 2000W output. (Most use much, much less, and I don't remember if modern cell towers are even allowed to use 2kW. But it's no more than that.) Using I=P/(4*pi*r^2), we see that the intensity at his house from the tower is 6.37 uW / m^2.
Her cell phone, if it's GSM, is capped at 2W output. The article doesn't say how far apart their houses are; just "on the next block". I'm going to just guess 150m away. (Manhattan blocks are 80m x 200m; central Melbourne blocks are 100m x 200m.) Using the same formula, the radiation intensity from her cell phone is 7.07 uW / m^2. With this set of assumptions, her cellphone could be irradiating him more than the tower (at peak; of course, she's probably not continuously on her phone).
The actual numbers are probably vastly different; different assumptions can change these by orders of magnitude. I'm ignoring modern cell realities, too: cell towers tend to be much lower power, but closer together these days. They also tend to use a non-uniform radiation pattern, not wasting power by radiating cell signals at the birds. Cell phones rarely radiate 2W of power. There's lots of other stuff that means that my numbers aren't anywhere near right, but it does demonstrate that it's POSSIBLE that her cell phone gives him more radiation than the tower.
Then again, the sun provides 750 W / m^2 to the ground (after atmospheric effects), a hundred million times more intense radiation (remember, my other numbers were in microwatts per meter squared), and at higher frequencies. So yeah.
That's how most MP4s come into existence. But an MP4 (or a TIFF for that matter) can be put up onto a webpage by an attacker, and rendered by the browser without the user needing to explicitly download and run it. If visiting a maliciously-crafted website can lead to arbitrary code execution, I'd say there's a serious problem.
(I haven't investigated the particular flaws closely enough to tell if that is the case. However, based on the advisory, it seems quite likely.)
Several years ago, I disassembled the output of gcc -O2 (on an RS/6000) for swaps through a temp variable, and swaps using xors. Turns out that the peephole optimizer recognized both patterns and replaced them with the same machine-specific fastest way.
Of all my friends, I know not a single person who's built a "homebrew video server," nor have I ever met anybody who's had a problem with scratching a DVD.
I'm Piquan. I meet both of those criteria. I've also never downloaded a movie from the Internet*. Pleased to meet you.
google might have been the cool new upstart 5 years ago in 2002, but now it is just as much an entrenched bloated corporate entity just as much as whatever your favorite corporate bogeyman is.
Would you please provide some rationale for this statement?
While Calc is indeed quite an impressive calculator, and while I do spend all my time in Emacs, I never use Calc. For simple tasks, I just use M-: (* 69 105) RET or the like. (I'll use the *scratch* buffer-- which I have set to lisp-interaction-mode-- if I want a trail.) For complex tasks, I whip out Maxima, because I don't need them often enough to memorize how to do this stuff in Calc.
I have never understood why we need "listening tests" to determine the "quality" of what basically amounts to a comparison of/in digital mathematics.
Suppose you have 2 codecs. Both of them reproduce the signal perfectly, except codec A adds a 5 dB hum at 2 kHz, and codec B adds a 50 dB hum at 45 kHz (well above what humans can perceive). Which wins? Which would you rather have: a lot of distortion you can't hear, or a little distortion you can?
Well, sure, we can restrict our comparison to the range of, say, 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Such a simple solution is possible because I gave a pretty simple example problem. Let's mix it up a bit more.
Now, codec A has a 3 dB hum at 4 kHz, and codec B has a 5 dB hum at 19 kHz. You can hear very well at 4 kHz, but not well at all at 19 kHz. You probably wouldn't notice the hum in codec B, but you sure would notice the one in codec A! Now which do you prefer? A machine comparison would prefer A, but most people would prefer B.
Ok, perhaps you can shape the weights on the inputs to match human hearing. This would require agreement on hearing models. Models for threshold of hearing are pretty well-established, but just wait! There's more!
Let's play (say) an electric guitar through a fuzzbox (common in rock; if you don't know how that sounds, think of "You Really Got Me") or overdrive (even more common). Let's also play an electric organ at about the same amplitude and pitch at the same time. Now, you won't be able to hear the organ. A frequency plot will show it, but your brain won't perceive it. This is a phenomenon known as psychoacoustic masking.
A codec has no need to encode that organ. It'd be wasted bits, since you won't hear it. Now, let's suppose you've got codec A that drops the organ (imperceptible, but a spike in a machine comparison), or codec B that adds minor distortion somewhere else in the spectrum (perceptible, and for this example let's specify it's a smaller spike than A shows). Which would you want?
Now, we're talking about more complex limitations on how we hear. In my earlier examples, you could model pretty simple threshold information. But masking is more complex, and there isn't a great agreement about the appropriate models. Indeed, one thing that figures into different codecs' designs is the psychoacoustic models used!
How do you decide on a valid psychoacoustic model? By doing listening tests! But codecs are, in many ways, implementations of psychoacoustic models. So deciding on codec quality really does come down to listening tests. Metrics are fine and good, but they're no substitute for ABX testing.
Ok, I find it odd that, at 9:08 am, it's giving me the results from the 6:00 pm observations (instead of, perhaps, the 6:00am-12:00am forecast, or better yet the 9:00 am observations or some such)... hence, it's telling me that it's nighttime. (It also does so by showing a full moon, even though the moon is nearly new.)
It's FUN playing with the globe! You can let go while you're spinning it, and it'll keep moving. You can also view the world either from top-down, or a side projection view, or in-between (in 6 increments).
They have The South Pole! Ok, despite where they put the icon, it's probably McMurdo's conditions. But it's still cool!
I wonder why and how they're limiting their observation stations. For instance, Silicon Valley workers may be surprised that there's no listings for Sunnyvale, even though it's in every other weather reporting program (because of Moffett Field).
It's still fun playing with the globe.
Why does it download the message to tell you that you can get the weather patch, but not the patch?
It's 9:15am and it still is showing me the 6:00 pm observations, even though the NWS releases observations every hour. Odd, that. If you go to Weathernews, Inc.'s website, their flash applet on the front page seems to be using old observations for San Francisco, at least (although the webcam at their SF office is up-to-date!).
Spinny globe WHEE!
Today's Play History: Forecast Channel: 00:17 / Forecast Channel: 00:06 / Total Play Time: 00:23
Funny... I recently had some tissue in my throat cauterized. (Like, two days ago.) I'm trying to think about the smell-- which was very strong, as there was lots of smoke billowing out of my nose and mouth-- but it reminded me of burning wood (as in, artistic woodburning, not fireplace), not pork.
Not sure what that means.
Riddle me this, Batman : when does 'got arrested' ever come off your personal life record?
As in when a prospective employer says 'have you ever been arrested?'
Prospective employers are emphatically not allowed to ask that.
Honestly, I don't think either one would have given a damn about this: they would have been too busy creating their own system from scratch.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there.
Woz built the Apple I as an open system. He intended hackers to hack; he went into this with a philosophy of openness and building on what other people have done.
Had a comparable open system existed, would he have built the Apple I? Possibly, but more for the exercise... several geeks write their own OS (or at least kernel), but still use another OS for day-to-day hacking.
So far, my diet is going great. But I had to do something about my Coke intake, and fast.
Diet Coke was what I used for comparison. Terrible... the artificial sweeteners have a metallic taste, so I feel like I'm drinking the T-1000. A little more shopping around, okay.
As for diet sodas, I found that Diet A&W has no detectible (at least, to my palette) artifice in its sweetness. It also has plenty of taste to it. That's my #1 choice for fizzy drinks now. Diet Barq's is close. Both of those are caffiene-free. I'm not sure if you'd consider that a boon or a bane.
If I gotta have the caffiene, Diet Dr. Pepper is the next in line. It comes in both caffienated and non- varieties, and the aftertaste is quite minimal. I noticed it for a week or two, but not anymore.
Unfortunately, some places (such as Subway, a dieter's haven for fast food) have exclusive contracts with Coca-Cola. The only diet drink my local Subway stocked was Diet Coke, ick. I wrote a letter to the manager complementing her store (if you're in Sunnyvale or Mountain View, the best Subway in the area is on El Camino, about a block south of Castro). I also asked if they would consider stocking some alternatives. Coca-Cola produces Minute Maid Light, another good alternative, even if it doesn't qualify as fizzy. They don't produce it in a bottle, though, but Coke Zero seems much more palitable than Diet Coke. It's my least favorite of what I've listed, but your tastes may vary.
For home use, I find that making 2-quart bottles of powdered drinks works well. Crystal Lite is certainly on the top of my list, and Kool-Aid has a number of sugar-free varieties.
Finally, a few companies make individual serving packets of their powdered drink products. I keep in my vehicle a dozen or so tiny packets of Crystal Light. If I'm going into a restaurant that might not serve a paletable diet drink, I bring one in, order water, and put in the powder. You can do the same with iced tea.
IANAL, but my understanding is that if something's been published, it can't be patented. I read once (on/., so take it with a grain of salt) that sometimes a company will publish an invention when they don't want to go to the trouble and expense of patenting it, but don't want anybody else to patent it either.
I'm not sure what's considered "publishing" in this context. Maybe releasing an open-source program would be sufficient, or possibly you'd need to make a Usenet post, or send it to the JACM or something.
And the REAL story (or at least, more real than the one those letters spell) can be found here.
While Marx's letter makes it sound like Warner Brothers was upset about the use of the word "Casablanca", that's not really how it happened. That's just what Groucho wanted the public to THINK happened.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone better not tell this guy that cell towers are omnidirectional so he'll experience that radiation regardless.
But the radiation is subject to an inverse-square law. A high-power source at a considerable distance (the tower) can give this guy less radiation than a low-power source at a close distance (her cell phone), as Opportunist's dad pointed out.
As an example: the guy is probably in a near-rural area, if he's trying to get away from radiation, on the outskirts of town. In hilly country, Wikipedia says a rural area can get a maximum of 5-8km. Let's say he's 5km away. (This is Santa Fe, so it's not exactly hill country, but it's probably not exactly totally rural either.) Let's also say the tower is using the regulatory maximum of 2000W output. (Most use much, much less, and I don't remember if modern cell towers are even allowed to use 2kW. But it's no more than that.) Using I=P/(4*pi*r^2), we see that the intensity at his house from the tower is 6.37 uW / m^2.
Her cell phone, if it's GSM, is capped at 2W output. The article doesn't say how far apart their houses are; just "on the next block". I'm going to just guess 150m away. (Manhattan blocks are 80m x 200m; central Melbourne blocks are 100m x 200m.) Using the same formula, the radiation intensity from her cell phone is 7.07 uW / m^2. With this set of assumptions, her cellphone could be irradiating him more than the tower (at peak; of course, she's probably not continuously on her phone).
The actual numbers are probably vastly different; different assumptions can change these by orders of magnitude. I'm ignoring modern cell realities, too: cell towers tend to be much lower power, but closer together these days. They also tend to use a non-uniform radiation pattern, not wasting power by radiating cell signals at the birds. Cell phones rarely radiate 2W of power. There's lots of other stuff that means that my numbers aren't anywhere near right, but it does demonstrate that it's POSSIBLE that her cell phone gives him more radiation than the tower.
Then again, the sun provides 750 W / m^2 to the ground (after atmospheric effects), a hundred million times more intense radiation (remember, my other numbers were in microwatts per meter squared), and at higher frequencies. So yeah.
These projects invariably have lots of tiny gotchas that you're going to steamroll in your effort to rewrite it. See Joel on Software on this.
I wonder if it could work with a Bluetooth keyboard
There's a dockable keyboard.
For three years now, people have known that uttering the words "Five hundred ninety-nine US Dollars" during the big unveil is a kiss of death.
Good thing it starts at $499, then.
Some models have 3G through AT&T, $15 / mo (250 MB) or $30 / mo (unlimited).
That's how most MP4s come into existence. But an MP4 (or a TIFF for that matter) can be put up onto a webpage by an attacker, and rendered by the browser without the user needing to explicitly download and run it. If visiting a maliciously-crafted website can lead to arbitrary code execution, I'd say there's a serious problem. (I haven't investigated the particular flaws closely enough to tell if that is the case. However, based on the advisory, it seems quite likely.)
In the literature, that's known as "MITM".
Several years ago, I disassembled the output of gcc -O2 (on an RS/6000) for swaps through a temp variable, and swaps using xors. Turns out that the peephole optimizer recognized both patterns and replaced them with the same machine-specific fastest way.
"The most secure computer is one not connected to the network. That's why I recommend Mediacom."
I'm Piquan. I meet both of those criteria. I've also never downloaded a movie from the Internet*. Pleased to meet you.
* Except some legal ones.
Would you please provide some rationale for this statement?
As a FreeBSD user, I'd be interested in hearing how you configure this.
You will not give me a million dollars.
Did you mean "if and only if"?
While Calc is indeed quite an impressive calculator, and while I do spend all my time in Emacs, I never use Calc. For simple tasks, I just use M-: (* 69 105) RET or the like. (I'll use the *scratch* buffer-- which I have set to lisp-interaction-mode-- if I want a trail.) For complex tasks, I whip out Maxima, because I don't need them often enough to memorize how to do this stuff in Calc.
Suppose you have 2 codecs. Both of them reproduce the signal perfectly, except codec A adds a 5 dB hum at 2 kHz, and codec B adds a 50 dB hum at 45 kHz (well above what humans can perceive). Which wins? Which would you rather have: a lot of distortion you can't hear, or a little distortion you can?
Well, sure, we can restrict our comparison to the range of, say, 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Such a simple solution is possible because I gave a pretty simple example problem. Let's mix it up a bit more.
Now, codec A has a 3 dB hum at 4 kHz, and codec B has a 5 dB hum at 19 kHz. You can hear very well at 4 kHz, but not well at all at 19 kHz. You probably wouldn't notice the hum in codec B, but you sure would notice the one in codec A! Now which do you prefer? A machine comparison would prefer A, but most people would prefer B.
Ok, perhaps you can shape the weights on the inputs to match human hearing. This would require agreement on hearing models. Models for threshold of hearing are pretty well-established, but just wait! There's more!
Let's play (say) an electric guitar through a fuzzbox (common in rock; if you don't know how that sounds, think of "You Really Got Me") or overdrive (even more common). Let's also play an electric organ at about the same amplitude and pitch at the same time. Now, you won't be able to hear the organ. A frequency plot will show it, but your brain won't perceive it. This is a phenomenon known as psychoacoustic masking.
A codec has no need to encode that organ. It'd be wasted bits, since you won't hear it. Now, let's suppose you've got codec A that drops the organ (imperceptible, but a spike in a machine comparison), or codec B that adds minor distortion somewhere else in the spectrum (perceptible, and for this example let's specify it's a smaller spike than A shows). Which would you want?
Now, we're talking about more complex limitations on how we hear. In my earlier examples, you could model pretty simple threshold information. But masking is more complex, and there isn't a great agreement about the appropriate models. Indeed, one thing that figures into different codecs' designs is the psychoacoustic models used!
How do you decide on a valid psychoacoustic model? By doing listening tests! But codecs are, in many ways, implementations of psychoacoustic models. So deciding on codec quality really does come down to listening tests. Metrics are fine and good, but they're no substitute for ABX testing.
He only said that ONCE, for crying out loud! Why does everybody make such a fuss?
Ok, I find it odd that, at 9:08 am, it's giving me the results from the 6:00 pm observations (instead of, perhaps, the 6:00am-12:00am forecast, or better yet the 9:00 am observations or some such)... hence, it's telling me that it's nighttime. (It also does so by showing a full moon, even though the moon is nearly new.)
It's FUN playing with the globe! You can let go while you're spinning it, and it'll keep moving. You can also view the world either from top-down, or a side projection view, or in-between (in 6 increments).
They have The South Pole! Ok, despite where they put the icon, it's probably McMurdo's conditions. But it's still cool!
I wonder why and how they're limiting their observation stations. For instance, Silicon Valley workers may be surprised that there's no listings for Sunnyvale, even though it's in every other weather reporting program (because of Moffett Field).
It's still fun playing with the globe.
Why does it download the message to tell you that you can get the weather patch, but not the patch?
It's 9:15am and it still is showing me the 6:00 pm observations, even though the NWS releases observations every hour. Odd, that. If you go to Weathernews, Inc.'s website, their flash applet on the front page seems to be using old observations for San Francisco, at least (although the webcam at their SF office is up-to-date!).
Spinny globe WHEE!
Today's Play History: Forecast Channel: 00:17 / Forecast Channel: 00:06 / Total Play Time: 00:23
Funny... I recently had some tissue in my throat cauterized. (Like, two days ago.) I'm trying to think about the smell-- which was very strong, as there was lots of smoke billowing out of my nose and mouth-- but it reminded me of burning wood (as in, artistic woodburning, not fireplace), not pork. Not sure what that means.
You assume the writeup is Moore's actual thoughts on the matter. It very well could simply be the facade he wishes to present to Microsoft.
Prospective employers are emphatically not allowed to ask that.
IANAL.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there.
Woz built the Apple I as an open system. He intended hackers to hack; he went into this with a philosophy of openness and building on what other people have done.
Had a comparable open system existed, would he have built the Apple I? Possibly, but more for the exercise... several geeks write their own OS (or at least kernel), but still use another OS for day-to-day hacking.
So far, my diet is going great. But I had to do something about my Coke intake, and fast.
Diet Coke was what I used for comparison. Terrible... the artificial sweeteners have a metallic taste, so I feel like I'm drinking the T-1000. A little more shopping around, okay.
As for diet sodas, I found that Diet A&W has no detectible (at least, to my palette) artifice in its sweetness. It also has plenty of taste to it. That's my #1 choice for fizzy drinks now. Diet Barq's is close. Both of those are caffiene-free. I'm not sure if you'd consider that a boon or a bane.
If I gotta have the caffiene, Diet Dr. Pepper is the next in line. It comes in both caffienated and non- varieties, and the aftertaste is quite minimal. I noticed it for a week or two, but not anymore.
Unfortunately, some places (such as Subway, a dieter's haven for fast food) have exclusive contracts with Coca-Cola. The only diet drink my local Subway stocked was Diet Coke, ick. I wrote a letter to the manager complementing her store (if you're in Sunnyvale or Mountain View, the best Subway in the area is on El Camino, about a block south of Castro). I also asked if they would consider stocking some alternatives. Coca-Cola produces Minute Maid Light, another good alternative, even if it doesn't qualify as fizzy. They don't produce it in a bottle, though, but Coke Zero seems much more palitable than Diet Coke. It's my least favorite of what I've listed, but your tastes may vary.
For home use, I find that making 2-quart bottles of powdered drinks works well. Crystal Lite is certainly on the top of my list, and Kool-Aid has a number of sugar-free varieties.
Finally, a few companies make individual serving packets of their powdered drink products. I keep in my vehicle a dozen or so tiny packets of Crystal Light. If I'm going into a restaurant that might not serve a paletable diet drink, I bring one in, order water, and put in the powder. You can do the same with iced tea.
Good luck!
IANAL, but my understanding is that if something's been published, it can't be patented. I read once (on /., so take it with a grain of salt) that sometimes a company will publish an invention when they don't want to go to the trouble and expense of patenting it, but don't want anybody else to patent it either.
I'm not sure what's considered "publishing" in this context. Maybe releasing an open-source program would be sufficient, or possibly you'd need to make a Usenet post, or send it to the JACM or something.
And the REAL story (or at least, more real than the one those letters spell) can be found here.
While Marx's letter makes it sound like Warner Brothers was upset about the use of the word "Casablanca", that's not really how it happened. That's just what Groucho wanted the public to THINK happened.
The bad news is, that's also the version that Coral Cache got.