The power consumed by your $99 fridge is an order of magnitude larger than the power consumed by your $40 target peltier cooler.
Look up the tech specs and see for yourself. The smaller unit takes less than 120 watts, then larger unit takes more than 600 watts (depending on the $99 unit you choose, it'll take much more than 1KW).
The GPS sentence of interest is $GPZDA. I don't use this sentence - but I do rely on the reported UTC in other sentences. Some GPS receivers do not provide this sentence, and I don't want to make the assumption in my program that all do.
Times reported by GPS receivers are sometimes UTC, sometimes GPS time, and sometimes it is not even clear what they are.
I haven't expereinced the problems you are describing.
Converting the GPS-calculated position to a timezone is very difficult (it at least requires a detailed description of the timezone borders, and those are not even constant). Providing DST information is even more difficult, as this article explains.
Yes, this is difficult. The main point is that one should rely on the computer system to provide accurate UTC and local time, and the computer should be synchronized to some reliable source which provides correct DST information. This may be a main time server that the computer listens to which does all the 'hard work', or it may be the system that the program is running on. Either way the program itself should not be changed - it should trust the computer time.
The main time server should be synchronized to a correct UTC time source (such as GPS) and either another source of DST information or keep DST information locally such that it is easy to adjust DST parameters. Thus only one program on one system needs to be adjusted instead of auditing all the programs and systems in the organization.
So please explain me (as the clever programmer you undoubtedly are, putting down your fellow programmers as stupid) how you are going to solve this with a GPS receiver.
I'm sorry to have insulted those programmers who choose to make poor assumptions, and cause me (and others) problems down the road. However, I stand by my opinion that they are making poor, shortsighted decisions. Perhaps some are not in a position to choose the ideal path and it is not their fault.
With many IT applications relying on accurate time information and many having automatic adjustments for DST, how will the IT world handle this change?
I'll handle it the way I always handle it. I ignore it.
The applications should be running on some standard time clock, such as UTC, and getting its time zone information (of which DST is a part) from a central time server that knows about it. The central time server, for me (use GPS or NIST), tells me when DST is.
Programs that have to run on "human" time, which are subject to DST need some careful consideration. One needs to understand the difference between running on human time versus presenting information in human time. Only those that have to run on human time need to pay careful attention to the "DST change this week" signal, and take appropiate measures before, during, and after the extra or missing hour. Those that only need to present information in human time still have some work to so - if they store times in UTC they need to know when DST changed so reports viewed after the switch accurately reflect data from before the switch in adjusted human time.
In our connected world there is little reason not to pay attention to NIST, GPS, and other accurate DST resources. We shouldn't be programming DST switches according to a fixed calculation - it can always go away or be changed. Further, it's different in every country, and many change it every year. All programs should take this from a central resource, or at worst allow for some user configuration of DST.
My understanding is that google maps is purposely limited so people can't "see swingsets" in back yards
Where might that understanding have come from?
It is more likely that they simply don't have the data. Satellites can't resolve much more than what's available at Google.
Local municipalities have aerial photos. Keyhole probably pays for aerial photos of larger citires, but is unlikely to get the entire US.
A good site to see high resolution aerials of Washtenaw county, MI (includes Ann Arbor) is here. Select browse, click somewhere on the image, then zoom in a few times. On the right hand side (after zooming in suficiently) you can select 2002 photos and see (among other things) kids playsets.
It has a nice picture of the 107,501 seat Michigan Stadium (Ann Arbor population: 115 thousand) on the corner of Main and Stadium in Ann Arbor.
I imagine other municipalities have similar resources available, though a lot of aerial imagery is still in flat files at the county office for many counties in the US.
"It's time to conclude this investigation and see what we've learned. The original question was "Can a spam filter play chess?". Clearly, the answer to this is yes, but making it play well is not so easy."
Let me be the first to disagree with [copyright law]. "Content", whether it be audio, video, art or whatever is a [commodity] just like any other. Just because it is digital, does not allow the producer to decide how their product is used. DRM is setting a VERY dangerous precedent. Digital media is sort of unchartered waters for everyone at the moment. So its easy to fall in the trap, and accept these [technological implementations of existing legal restrictions] as "normal". But what happens when similar principles start spreading [to items that fall outside copyright laws]?
You aren't the first, and you won't be the last.
Background:
Copyright has existed for centuries. Each time technology made it easier to reproduce intellectual items (art, words, music, etc) copyright solidified further into what we now think of as copyright law.
Such developments were the printing press, the lithographic process, records, tapes, punch cards, discs, etc.
Until recently it was always easy to shut down and punish copyright violators - there was always a physical product exchanging hands that contained the copyrighted work. This physical item usually cost money to produce, and typically the producer received money or other compensation for the costs of the carrier and reproduction resources. One could always follow a money trail. Smaller forms of copyright abuse (sharing with a friend) were not pursued legally because the sharing was limited by available funds of the sharers.
Move forward to now:
Copyrighted works may now be shared without physical media, incurring no significant marginal cost to either the supplier or the recipient. It costs me as much to not make the work available as it does to make the work available.
Recent technological impediments to sharing are simply to increase the cost of sharing artificially.
Key, though, is the fact that copyright law still applies despite the lack of any natural cost barriers.
So these new monitors won't prevent you from doing with the computer what you want, unless what you want is to use the computer to experience copyrighted works. At that point the copyright holder has every right to demand that your computer meet certian requirements before they will allow you to experience their work with the exceptions listed in the law. One of these is fair use, but that is the tip of the iceberg.
Copyright law not only gives copyright holders certian rights, it gives users certian rights as well.
Your Harry Potter example is unconvincing - talking about a book is certianly within the limits of fair use. Reprinting a full chapter and distributing it is not. The recent injunctions are because copyright law protects published works very differently than unpublished works. Until the book hits the shelves according to the rules of the publisher, it is unpublished, and as such is protected much more strongly than after publishing. The injunctions simply underscore that. Talking about an unpublished work can be against the copyright law.
The hardware may be inexpensive (not cheap), but the quality control isn't. You're missing the point of what Apple is all about.
Quality? Apple is just as much into cost control as any other manufacturer, and the quality is not significantly better than other mid-range manufacturer equipment.
The main reason Apple systems appear to be comparatively stable is that they control the hardware and software. It's not because they have a better QA process or department. It's that their scope and focus is very narrow - they don't have to worry about 10 different processors running with 30 different chipsets supporting 150 different video cards, etc, etc, etc.
Apple is not "all about" quality. They are about user experience, which includes quality. But if they can save 1 million dollars by putting a cheaper capacitor in the power supply at the expense of 100 thousand dollars of customer calls, returns, and repairs, they will do it because the total experience is not harmed. The call to customer service goes very smoothly for the customer. The total user experience from browsing, to purchasing, to using, to servicing is their focus.
Not hardware quality - except as it impacts the user experience.
Of course, the user experience focus is enveloped by their profit focus. If anything, Apple is all about profit, just like every other public capitalist company in the US. Quality is actually pretty far down the list of things Apple is "all about."
First, in most office buildings signals reflect and bounce in non obvious ways. I'd start with a directional antenna with the tightest beamwidth you can find (90 degrees, 60 degrees, etc). Choose 5 or 10 spread out locations and look at the netstumbler reported dB as you sweep in a 360 degree circle. Mark which channels have strong signals and in what direction they are coming from. Plot several lines on an office map for each channel in each spot - the strongest signal, and a few weaker signals to help reduce problems with signal reflections.
If you are attempting to do this for a multi story building then you may choose to sweep in a sphere, or simply do the single floor sweep with multiple locations on each floor.
This will give you a good general location to search more closely.
If this doesn't help or work very well, or you are interested in the armchair approach, try searching from the network.
You know the IP address of the access point. If you don't, connect to it and find out. This may require breaking a WEP key, and setting up and internal website that shows the AP's WAN IP address when you view the page if the AP is set up to route and NAT.
Now that you have the IP address, you should also have the MAC. Set up the DHCP server to deny that MAC an IP address if you don't want to worry about it and think the person isn't very bright.
Use your routers to find the port or hub the AP is connected to, and use various network tools to locate the actual connection. You could flood the network with ARPs or pings for the IP and pull plugs until it stops responding.
If you're certain it is the only device on that wire you could 'disable' it with an etherkiller. Of course, you may also set the building on fire, but either way the AP will stop.
You could also setup a rogue machine that listened to the wireless signal and spoofed TCP/IP responses for webpages and images. If the people can't use the AP, then it's effectively dead.
There are a variety of ways to further shut down APs, but this ought to get you started.
Premise: School serves two purposes:
1) Give children a cultural education
2) Give children enough basic skills that if they fail to feed and shelter themselves it's either because they choose not to or because they are mentally or physically unable to.
What, in your opinion, would make primary and secondary education as good as possible?
What are your goals? The real problem with education is that everyone has a different idea about what a "good" education is actually supposed to accomplish.
I have no experience of education outside the US, but I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks.
Translation: I have no basis of comparison, but the one thing that I have doesn't meet my standards.
However, what can we do to make it suck less?
Better parenting skills. It's not strictly the fault of the schools, and the schools can only improve as much the parents allow.
Inflated grades? Blame Johnny's parents - they complain every time Johnny gets below a B.
Math skills are slipping around the country? Blame the parents who complain about their Suzy's homework load.
Many parents only send their kids to school in order to get them ready for college. Since the goal is college, then a good education is less important than good grades, and being able to do well on tests.
Many schools only teach enough to do well on the state and federally mandated tests to protect their funding. Since the goal is testing well, thinking skills are less important than regurgitation and test taking skills.
Many school boards are elected. Their goal is to be re-elected, so they focus on making the noisiest parents happy.
Many teachers aren't tenured. Their goal is to appear as though their students are successful at the goals the school and board sets for them. Good average class grade, and good tests are key.
The real problem? On the long term, everyone wants to have succesful, happy students that grow into productive, happy adults. However the day to day goals diverge greatly from that idealistic long term goal, and the system is held together by more sticks than carrots.
You can't please all of the people all of the time. Sometimes the best compromise is when everyone is unhappy. You have to teach to the lowest common denominator, since education is a right.
The total output of all the radio transmitters in use today is much less than the thermal radiation from the Earth integrated over the same band.
Which band? 1MHz to 10GHz? Where are you getting your data about thermal radiation output of the Earth?
Further, UWB means that a single radio is going to cover less than a few hundred MHz. Due to mass production it is unlikely that we will spread these radios out in such a manner as to cover the entire band evenly. There will be large spikes of activity around given frequencies.
So UWB will raise the apparant noise level by a perceptible amount at certian points in the band.
Of course, the reality is that UWB isn't the solution people think it is. It's nice now because we are all using narrowband communications, and UWB can really shine in this environment. But if all our communications were UWB we'd have to use the same amount of power to overcome the noise floor and go the same distance. There are some other advantages, but largely we are simply trading one communications type for another. The big deal is that both can coexist to some extent and we get more total communications within the same band for not much more money/power/etc.
Of course, better electronics and algorithms help immensly, since a lot of the work of decoding a UWB signal is moved into the DSP realm instead of having so much inefficient analog electronics.
Using mpeg4 and supply barely broadcast quality (not even DVD quality, nevermind HDTV) means a typical 90 minute movie would run between 1/2 and 2 GB. At today's brodband speeds this will range from 40 minutes (500M @ 3Mbps) to 5 hours(2G @ 768Kbps).
The sweet spot will likely be right around 1.5Mbps broadband and under 1GB movie size. Delivery would take less time than watching the movie, and so you order the movie, let it buffer for 10-15 minutes while you pop popcorn, etc, then start streaming the movie.
Delivery isn't a concern as long as the bit rate of the movie is about half your download rate, and a 300Kbps bit rate is bearable, a 768Kbps stream is about what you expect for ok cable TV.
While they won't be delivering at great quality, they will be getting consumers by the ability to get content on demand, for low cost, with a huge selection. Even home theater buffs will use the service simply because it's more convenient than waiting for the disc in the mail or leaving the house to pick it up - especially if the local video store is out of copies. Further, it'll probably be similar to the current system, but limited somewhat since the mailing delay is not built in. Pay $17.99/mo to get 12 movies per month (about 3/week). You can only have up to three movies on your player at a time, and can watch them at any time until you fill the slot with another movie.
What would be really nice is if one could select the quality and trade off downlaod time for quality, as well as queuing up movies so they are available on the player at the time of release (new movies are released on tuesday - download starts at high quality monday afternoon and unlocks at midnight).
And if they get large enough to push at the movie studios they may even be able to get movies before video store release dates, and possibly simultaneous with theater release. But these are very unlikely, due to the huge video store market.
But the biggest change for NetFlix will be that they can (if they work out licensing correctly) get around the limitation of their current list system. Right now you won't necessarily get the movies you want in the order you prioritized them. With downloads there's no limit - you can get the movie you want, when you want it.
A very noisy planet will still stand out since it will be generating much more radio noise than the surroundings.
Saying that wide band communications is less visible than narrow band communications is like saying that white light is less visible than red light. You'll still be able to see the 'noisy' white light in the field of gray and black, and perhaps more easily than the red light.
you can't build a computer if state information is going to evaportate in a second or less.
If your quantum computer can calculate what you need to know within that period of time and still have time left over to read out the state, then I don't care how fast it evaporates.
I'll still get the cryptokey.
Of course, if it's proven that each time you create one it actually forms a micro universe of living creatures and progresses it millions of years before you kill it through apparant neglect, then you're going to have a problem with religious people.
But you'd still have the key.
Alternately, you'd have still gotten the message you set the secure channel up for.
If something breaks the shuttle will not return to Earth.
Wrong. If something breaks and the shuttle is determined too dangerous to fly home, it will "return" to the part of the earth that is called "ocean" sans humans.
It is likely that it would do so under power with all sorts of telemetry (more than what they had in the past) so that as much useful data could be obtained from the failure as possible. As long as it doesnt break up over the ocean, it may even be recovered in large measure for physical inspection, depending on the nature of the failure.
(Actually, they just like to drop things into the ocean. It's like throwing rocks into a lake, but on a much larger scale. Each country is competing to get the largest thing into orbit so at some future date it can be plunked into the water with a bright light and big splash.)
The itanium is an amazing architecture with so many performance boosting upgrades that it would have blown everything out of the water.
If it came out on time.
It was so late that by the time it came out it was still better than existing processors, but not by a large enough margin to justify its cost.
As the clock speed goes up, and as the other processors find their limitations and drop out of the race, the Itanium will look better and better. There is, however, a large investment in time and software that must be made before it becomes truly useful. It is unlikely that MS is going to support more than one architecture simultaneously for the desktop or server as it tried to do for x86/alpha.
The big marketing push and the number of companies signing on to the good ship itanic coupled with the constant pushback of the release date caused Intel to lost a lot of the press attention they should have received when it did come out.
It'll be interesting to see what happens over time, especially as Intel wants it to be a server chip.
Of course, this could all be a big leadup to the announcement that Apple is going with the Itanium.
It's usually being paid for by someone with an agenda and, no surprise, the research tends to support the conclusions the customer wants.
Please note that this isn't necessarily the fault of the research firm. The customer gets to set the bounds of the research, and these boundaries determine the outcome.
A company could not/would not give Jupiter or Gartner carte blanche because they would run them dry - research is infinite, and bounds must be set.
So don't blame the research firm, or even the industry. This is blatant PR. If the company paying for the research wants to spend their money in this way, let them. We all know they aren't doing it for the knowledge. The reports they expect to get real knowledge out of are held confidential.
This would be great for IDs and checks that you have to renew occasionally.
If you don't check in to renew your visa on time then leaving and re-entering the country becomes much more difficult. If you don't get re-etched every time you visit your parole officer it is obvious when you are next checked.
Put the etching closer to the tip for shorter periods of time.
Use it for "buy ten sandwiches, get the next free!" promotions.
Etch a new credit card number on every month - you know if someone physically stole the nail, and if they only got the number then it won't be valid after a few weeks if you don't notice right away.
Could be coupled with fingerprint scanners. The fingerprint would not be stored in a big DB - it's encrypted on your fingernail. The scanner checks that the info on the finger and the print match so it's more difficult for someone to copy - they need both the fingerprint and the numbers, and the fingerprint never leaves the scanner. No need to worry about some corporation "losing" your fingerprint like they "lose" other personally identifiable information - they never store it in the first place.
Then add a PIN and you've got a reasonably secure system - something you are, you have, and you know. Don't want it anymore? A quick swipe of the nail file and it's all gone.
The wire in the cables is silver. While it's still a huge rip-off, at least you are getting silver instead of copper. You can recoup some of your investment by melting them down and selling them, but it's still not worth 1/10th what you're paying.
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That was a bad analogy.
The power consumed by your $99 fridge is an order of magnitude larger than the power consumed by your $40 target peltier cooler.
Look up the tech specs and see for yourself. The smaller unit takes less than 120 watts, then larger unit takes more than 600 watts (depending on the $99 unit you choose, it'll take much more than 1KW).
-Adam
The GPS sentence of interest is $GPZDA. I don't use this sentence - but I do rely on the reported UTC in other sentences. Some GPS receivers do not provide this sentence, and I don't want to make the assumption in my program that all do.
Times reported by GPS receivers are sometimes UTC, sometimes GPS time, and sometimes it is not even clear what they are.
I haven't expereinced the problems you are describing.
Converting the GPS-calculated position to a timezone is very difficult (it at least requires a detailed description of the timezone borders, and those are not even constant). Providing DST information is even more difficult, as this article explains.
Yes, this is difficult. The main point is that one should rely on the computer system to provide accurate UTC and local time, and the computer should be synchronized to some reliable source which provides correct DST information. This may be a main time server that the computer listens to which does all the 'hard work', or it may be the system that the program is running on. Either way the program itself should not be changed - it should trust the computer time.
The main time server should be synchronized to a correct UTC time source (such as GPS) and either another source of DST information or keep DST information locally such that it is easy to adjust DST parameters. Thus only one program on one system needs to be adjusted instead of auditing all the programs and systems in the organization.
So please explain me (as the clever programmer you undoubtedly are, putting down your fellow programmers as stupid) how you are going to solve this with a GPS receiver.
I'm sorry to have insulted those programmers who choose to make poor assumptions, and cause me (and others) problems down the road. However, I stand by my opinion that they are making poor, shortsighted decisions. Perhaps some are not in a position to choose the ideal path and it is not their fault.
-Adam
With many IT applications relying on accurate time information and many having automatic adjustments for DST, how will the IT world handle this change?
I'll handle it the way I always handle it. I ignore it.
The applications should be running on some standard time clock, such as UTC, and getting its time zone information (of which DST is a part) from a central time server that knows about it. The central time server, for me (use GPS or NIST), tells me when DST is.
Programs that have to run on "human" time, which are subject to DST need some careful consideration. One needs to understand the difference between running on human time versus presenting information in human time. Only those that have to run on human time need to pay careful attention to the "DST change this week" signal, and take appropiate measures before, during, and after the extra or missing hour. Those that only need to present information in human time still have some work to so - if they store times in UTC they need to know when DST changed so reports viewed after the switch accurately reflect data from before the switch in adjusted human time.
In our connected world there is little reason not to pay attention to NIST, GPS, and other accurate DST resources. We shouldn't be programming DST switches according to a fixed calculation - it can always go away or be changed. Further, it's different in every country, and many change it every year. All programs should take this from a central resource, or at worst allow for some user configuration of DST.
-Adam
My understanding is that google maps is purposely limited so people can't "see swingsets" in back yards
Where might that understanding have come from?
It is more likely that they simply don't have the data. Satellites can't resolve much more than what's available at Google.
Local municipalities have aerial photos. Keyhole probably pays for aerial photos of larger citires, but is unlikely to get the entire US.
A good site to see high resolution aerials of Washtenaw county, MI (includes Ann Arbor) is here. Select browse, click somewhere on the image, then zoom in a few times. On the right hand side (after zooming in suficiently) you can select 2002 photos and see (among other things) kids playsets.
It has a nice picture of the 107,501 seat Michigan Stadium (Ann Arbor population: 115 thousand) on the corner of Main and Stadium in Ann Arbor.
I imagine other municipalities have similar resources available, though a lot of aerial imagery is still in flat files at the county office for many counties in the US.
-Adam
"It's time to conclude this investigation and see what we've learned. The original question was "Can a spam filter play chess?". Clearly, the answer to this is yes, but making it play well is not so easy."
-Adam
Translation:
Let me be the first to disagree with [copyright law]. "Content", whether it be audio, video, art or whatever is a [commodity] just like any other. Just because it is digital, does not allow the producer to decide how their product is used. DRM is setting a VERY dangerous precedent. Digital media is sort of unchartered waters for everyone at the moment. So its easy to fall in the trap, and accept these [technological implementations of existing legal restrictions] as "normal". But what happens when similar principles start spreading [to items that fall outside copyright laws]?
You aren't the first, and you won't be the last.
Background:
Copyright has existed for centuries. Each time technology made it easier to reproduce intellectual items (art, words, music, etc) copyright solidified further into what we now think of as copyright law.
Such developments were the printing press, the lithographic process, records, tapes, punch cards, discs, etc.
Until recently it was always easy to shut down and punish copyright violators - there was always a physical product exchanging hands that contained the copyrighted work. This physical item usually cost money to produce, and typically the producer received money or other compensation for the costs of the carrier and reproduction resources. One could always follow a money trail. Smaller forms of copyright abuse (sharing with a friend) were not pursued legally because the sharing was limited by available funds of the sharers.
Move forward to now:
Copyrighted works may now be shared without physical media, incurring no significant marginal cost to either the supplier or the recipient. It costs me as much to not make the work available as it does to make the work available.
Recent technological impediments to sharing are simply to increase the cost of sharing artificially.
Key, though, is the fact that copyright law still applies despite the lack of any natural cost barriers.
So these new monitors won't prevent you from doing with the computer what you want, unless what you want is to use the computer to experience copyrighted works. At that point the copyright holder has every right to demand that your computer meet certian requirements before they will allow you to experience their work with the exceptions listed in the law. One of these is fair use, but that is the tip of the iceberg.
Copyright law not only gives copyright holders certian rights, it gives users certian rights as well.
Your Harry Potter example is unconvincing - talking about a book is certianly within the limits of fair use. Reprinting a full chapter and distributing it is not. The recent injunctions are because copyright law protects published works very differently than unpublished works. Until the book hits the shelves according to the rules of the publisher, it is unpublished, and as such is protected much more strongly than after publishing. The injunctions simply underscore that. Talking about an unpublished work can be against the copyright law.
-Adam
The hardware may be inexpensive (not cheap), but the quality control isn't. You're missing the point of what Apple is all about.
Quality? Apple is just as much into cost control as any other manufacturer, and the quality is not significantly better than other mid-range manufacturer equipment.
The main reason Apple systems appear to be comparatively stable is that they control the hardware and software. It's not because they have a better QA process or department. It's that their scope and focus is very narrow - they don't have to worry about 10 different processors running with 30 different chipsets supporting 150 different video cards, etc, etc, etc.
Apple is not "all about" quality. They are about user experience, which includes quality. But if they can save 1 million dollars by putting a cheaper capacitor in the power supply at the expense of 100 thousand dollars of customer calls, returns, and repairs, they will do it because the total experience is not harmed. The call to customer service goes very smoothly for the customer. The total user experience from browsing, to purchasing, to using, to servicing is their focus.
Not hardware quality - except as it impacts the user experience.
Of course, the user experience focus is enveloped by their profit focus. If anything, Apple is all about profit, just like every other public capitalist company in the US. Quality is actually pretty far down the list of things Apple is "all about."
-Adam
May I introduce you to OSX. It even runs on cheap intel hardware.
I doubt that. It could run on cheap intel hardware, but Apple will restrict to expensive Apple hardware, which consists of cheap Intel hardware.
-Adam
First, in most office buildings signals reflect and bounce in non obvious ways. I'd start with a directional antenna with the tightest beamwidth you can find (90 degrees, 60 degrees, etc). Choose 5 or 10 spread out locations and look at the netstumbler reported dB as you sweep in a 360 degree circle. Mark which channels have strong signals and in what direction they are coming from. Plot several lines on an office map for each channel in each spot - the strongest signal, and a few weaker signals to help reduce problems with signal reflections.
If you are attempting to do this for a multi story building then you may choose to sweep in a sphere, or simply do the single floor sweep with multiple locations on each floor.
This will give you a good general location to search more closely.
If this doesn't help or work very well, or you are interested in the armchair approach, try searching from the network.
You know the IP address of the access point. If you don't, connect to it and find out. This may require breaking a WEP key, and setting up and internal website that shows the AP's WAN IP address when you view the page if the AP is set up to route and NAT.
Now that you have the IP address, you should also have the MAC. Set up the DHCP server to deny that MAC an IP address if you don't want to worry about it and think the person isn't very bright.
Use your routers to find the port or hub the AP is connected to, and use various network tools to locate the actual connection. You could flood the network with ARPs or pings for the IP and pull plugs until it stops responding.
If you're certain it is the only device on that wire you could 'disable' it with an etherkiller. Of course, you may also set the building on fire, but either way the AP will stop.
You could also setup a rogue machine that listened to the wireless signal and spoofed TCP/IP responses for webpages and images. If the people can't use the AP, then it's effectively dead.
There are a variety of ways to further shut down APs, but this ought to get you started.
-Adam
In this instance, a high spot could be the roof or top floor of a building, etc.
Either way, as flat as florida is, you need to get a little above ground floor if you want to see the launch pad.
-Adam
Bring a telescope and find a high spot a few miles away.
-Adam
Premise: School serves two purposes:
1) Give children a cultural education
2) Give children enough basic skills that if they fail to feed and shelter themselves it's either because they choose not to or because they are mentally or physically unable to.
What, in your opinion, would make primary and secondary education as good as possible?
What are your goals? The real problem with education is that everyone has a different idea about what a "good" education is actually supposed to accomplish.
I have no experience of education outside the US, but I can say confidently that public education in my country sucks.
Translation: I have no basis of comparison, but the one thing that I have doesn't meet my standards.
However, what can we do to make it suck less?
Better parenting skills. It's not strictly the fault of the schools, and the schools can only improve as much the parents allow.
Inflated grades? Blame Johnny's parents - they complain every time Johnny gets below a B.
Math skills are slipping around the country? Blame the parents who complain about their Suzy's homework load.
Many parents only send their kids to school in order to get them ready for college. Since the goal is college, then a good education is less important than good grades, and being able to do well on tests.
Many schools only teach enough to do well on the state and federally mandated tests to protect their funding. Since the goal is testing well, thinking skills are less important than regurgitation and test taking skills.
Many school boards are elected. Their goal is to be re-elected, so they focus on making the noisiest parents happy.
Many teachers aren't tenured. Their goal is to appear as though their students are successful at the goals the school and board sets for them. Good average class grade, and good tests are key.
The real problem? On the long term, everyone wants to have succesful, happy students that grow into productive, happy adults. However the day to day goals diverge greatly from that idealistic long term goal, and the system is held together by more sticks than carrots.
You can't please all of the people all of the time. Sometimes the best compromise is when everyone is unhappy. You have to teach to the lowest common denominator, since education is a right.
-Adam
pure-gold-toilet
All I can say about that is *COLD*. Hopefully there's a heater in the seat or something, man, cause that's just harsh.
-Adam
The total output of all the radio transmitters in use today is much less than the thermal radiation from the Earth integrated over the same band.
Which band? 1MHz to 10GHz? Where are you getting your data about thermal radiation output of the Earth?
Further, UWB means that a single radio is going to cover less than a few hundred MHz. Due to mass production it is unlikely that we will spread these radios out in such a manner as to cover the entire band evenly. There will be large spikes of activity around given frequencies.
So UWB will raise the apparant noise level by a perceptible amount at certian points in the band.
Of course, the reality is that UWB isn't the solution people think it is. It's nice now because we are all using narrowband communications, and UWB can really shine in this environment. But if all our communications were UWB we'd have to use the same amount of power to overcome the noise floor and go the same distance. There are some other advantages, but largely we are simply trading one communications type for another. The big deal is that both can coexist to some extent and we get more total communications within the same band for not much more money/power/etc.
Of course, better electronics and algorithms help immensly, since a lot of the work of decoding a UWB signal is moved into the DSP realm instead of having so much inefficient analog electronics.
-Adam
Using mpeg4 and supply barely broadcast quality (not even DVD quality, nevermind HDTV) means a typical 90 minute movie would run between 1/2 and 2 GB. At today's brodband speeds this will range from 40 minutes (500M @ 3Mbps) to 5 hours(2G @ 768Kbps).
The sweet spot will likely be right around 1.5Mbps broadband and under 1GB movie size. Delivery would take less time than watching the movie, and so you order the movie, let it buffer for 10-15 minutes while you pop popcorn, etc, then start streaming the movie.
Delivery isn't a concern as long as the bit rate of the movie is about half your download rate, and a 300Kbps bit rate is bearable, a 768Kbps stream is about what you expect for ok cable TV.
While they won't be delivering at great quality, they will be getting consumers by the ability to get content on demand, for low cost, with a huge selection. Even home theater buffs will use the service simply because it's more convenient than waiting for the disc in the mail or leaving the house to pick it up - especially if the local video store is out of copies. Further, it'll probably be similar to the current system, but limited somewhat since the mailing delay is not built in. Pay $17.99/mo to get 12 movies per month (about 3/week). You can only have up to three movies on your player at a time, and can watch them at any time until you fill the slot with another movie.
What would be really nice is if one could select the quality and trade off downlaod time for quality, as well as queuing up movies so they are available on the player at the time of release (new movies are released on tuesday - download starts at high quality monday afternoon and unlocks at midnight).
And if they get large enough to push at the movie studios they may even be able to get movies before video store release dates, and possibly simultaneous with theater release. But these are very unlikely, due to the huge video store market.
But the biggest change for NetFlix will be that they can (if they work out licensing correctly) get around the limitation of their current list system. Right now you won't necessarily get the movies you want in the order you prioritized them. With downloads there's no limit - you can get the movie you want, when you want it.
-Adam
A very noisy planet will still stand out since it will be generating much more radio noise than the surroundings.
Saying that wide band communications is less visible than narrow band communications is like saying that white light is less visible than red light. You'll still be able to see the 'noisy' white light in the field of gray and black, and perhaps more easily than the red light.
-Adam
you can't build a computer if state information is going to evaportate in a second or less.
If your quantum computer can calculate what you need to know within that period of time and still have time left over to read out the state, then I don't care how fast it evaporates.
I'll still get the cryptokey.
Of course, if it's proven that each time you create one it actually forms a micro universe of living creatures and progresses it millions of years before you kill it through apparant neglect, then you're going to have a problem with religious people.
But you'd still have the key.
Alternately, you'd have still gotten the message you set the secure channel up for.
-Adam
If something breaks the shuttle will not return to Earth.
Wrong. If something breaks and the shuttle is determined too dangerous to fly home, it will "return" to the part of the earth that is called "ocean" sans humans.
It is likely that it would do so under power with all sorts of telemetry (more than what they had in the past) so that as much useful data could be obtained from the failure as possible. As long as it doesnt break up over the ocean, it may even be recovered in large measure for physical inspection, depending on the nature of the failure.
(Actually, they just like to drop things into the ocean. It's like throwing rocks into a lake, but on a much larger scale. Each country is competing to get the largest thing into orbit so at some future date it can be plunked into the water with a bright light and big splash.)
-Adam
They're pretty sure that the ice will hold the camera to the shuttle just fine.
-Adam
The itanium is an amazing architecture with so many performance boosting upgrades that it would have blown everything out of the water.
If it came out on time.
It was so late that by the time it came out it was still better than existing processors, but not by a large enough margin to justify its cost.
As the clock speed goes up, and as the other processors find their limitations and drop out of the race, the Itanium will look better and better. There is, however, a large investment in time and software that must be made before it becomes truly useful. It is unlikely that MS is going to support more than one architecture simultaneously for the desktop or server as it tried to do for x86/alpha.
The big marketing push and the number of companies signing on to the good ship itanic coupled with the constant pushback of the release date caused Intel to lost a lot of the press attention they should have received when it did come out.
It'll be interesting to see what happens over time, especially as Intel wants it to be a server chip.
Of course, this could all be a big leadup to the announcement that Apple is going with the Itanium.
-Adam
It's usually being paid for by someone with an agenda and, no surprise, the research tends to support the conclusions the customer wants.
Please note that this isn't necessarily the fault of the research firm. The customer gets to set the bounds of the research, and these boundaries determine the outcome.
A company could not/would not give Jupiter or Gartner carte blanche because they would run them dry - research is infinite, and bounds must be set.
So don't blame the research firm, or even the industry. This is blatant PR. If the company paying for the research wants to spend their money in this way, let them. We all know they aren't doing it for the knowledge. The reports they expect to get real knowledge out of are held confidential.
-Adam
Amen brother! I, for one, will start keyboard sitting to protect this ancient keyboard from the loggers!
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This would be great for IDs and checks that you have to renew occasionally.
If you don't check in to renew your visa on time then leaving and re-entering the country becomes much more difficult. If you don't get re-etched every time you visit your parole officer it is obvious when you are next checked.
Put the etching closer to the tip for shorter periods of time.
Use it for "buy ten sandwiches, get the next free!" promotions.
Etch a new credit card number on every month - you know if someone physically stole the nail, and if they only got the number then it won't be valid after a few weeks if you don't notice right away.
Could be coupled with fingerprint scanners. The fingerprint would not be stored in a big DB - it's encrypted on your fingernail. The scanner checks that the info on the finger and the print match so it's more difficult for someone to copy - they need both the fingerprint and the numbers, and the fingerprint never leaves the scanner. No need to worry about some corporation "losing" your fingerprint like they "lose" other personally identifiable information - they never store it in the first place.
Then add a PIN and you've got a reasonably secure system - something you are, you have, and you know. Don't want it anymore? A quick swipe of the nail file and it's all gone.
-Adam
It's like ordering filet mignon at a fancy restaurant from a pretentious waiter and getting a plate of Rhesus Pieces.
This is like the guy going to McDonalds and ordering a filet mignon. Do you really look at Slashdot and think, "Fancy restaurant!"
getting a plate of Rhesus Pieces
It must be quite the fancy restaurant to serve monkey parts. Perhaps the rainforest cafe?
-Adam
The wire in the cables is silver. While it's still a huge rip-off, at least you are getting silver instead of copper. You can recoup some of your investment by melting them down and selling them, but it's still not worth 1/10th what you're paying.
-Adam