Look for extremely intense and brief flashes in the IR region at a specific frequency (or more than one frequency.
Strobe lights emit very intense, very brief flashes of light which are loaded with IR. Their controllers flash them at the correct frequency.
The detectors also take into account reflections and other problems which might cause the detector to misread a signal.
The reason why this was never really a problem before is that strobe lights are illegal on cars - it turn them into emergency response vehicles, and is against the regulations that concern lights on cars. Further, they are very visible, and can be caught relatively easily. An IR filter over the strobe would reduce this problem, but it would be absorbing so much energy it would get too hot to handle (solvable problem). Lastly the detectors require a very exact frequency, which requires more than a generic radioshack strobe controller. - suffice to say they were not easy for an average joe to build and use.
With the relatively recent advent of high power, cheap IR LEDs this is now possible for the average joe. The LEDs are still fairly expensive for the power required, but certianly not out of reach. The companies selling these things are making a huge bundle of money, though. $300 for probably less than $20 worth of parts and labor.
It's an issue that will likely take a technological and hands-on solution. Many installed detectors are already capable of being used with more complex transmitters, they just haven't enabled that feature. Probably can't even find the manual.
A vertical market is a particular industry or group of enterprises in which similar products or services are developed and marketed using similar methods (and to whom goods and services can be sold). Broad examples of vertical markets are: insurance, real estate, banking, heavy manufacturing, retail, transportation, hospitals, and government.
Vertical market software is software aimed at a particular vertical market and can be contrasted with horizontal market software (such as word processors and spreadsheet programs) which can be used in a cross-section of industries.
Depending on just how vertical the application is, I predict the following:
1) Companies wanting to use it will have a staff member to manage it, who will likely be able to modify code as needed.
2) Assuming the program is internal to the company, it will not be distributed - therefore there is no need to share code changes back with you and the community at large.
So it's likely you will have some users, but few contributers.
But that's based on the assumption that it is of little use to more than a handful of people/companies around the world, and that it is only to be used internally to the company.
RUN AWAY! RUN AWA - What? oh, yeah, that's a good thing. Sorry 'bout that folks. Won't happen again. I'll just go find another catastrophe to panic about...
Most of those who've hung around slashdot long enough to actually be interested in this particular discussion will be familiar with the many reasons for and against prepending GNU in front of any software which appears to require GNU tools to maintain core functionality.
I'd like to re-iterate my position that those who feel it should be added, as in 'GNU-LINUX', are askin' for a smackin'.
So called 'GNU-Darwin' is NOTOpenDarwin so far as I can tell from their respective websites. Apple is not associated with GNU-Darwin in any way, other than GNU-Darwin seems to have stolen the mascot, the name (adding GNU - how original and trademark avoiding), and the source.
Seems to me that this 'GNU-Darwin' is no more than a political website, probably distributing the stock Darwin unchanged.
Stupid, stupid people. This can of worms has been opened before - don't they know that polotics is not considered 'added-value'? And if they don't have anything substantial to add to the core Darwin, they won't last more than it takes for them to come up with some other bandwagon.
Porting the table structure is not the same as, oh, porting the actual program so that it reads and writes to PostgreSQL.
What exactly do you mean by giving us a database configuration file, and then saying you've ported compiere to postgresql? Where are the modified java files?
At the time they made the decision to start building the bridge MySQL didn't support triggers, transactions, and stored procedures.
Triggers are not currently supported, and I believe that the transactions and stored procedures are not as functionals as Oracle's. While PostgreSQL doesn't support these as fully either, it does support triggers which are not trivial to emulate in java (not to mention resource intensive)
At least, that's what I remember from a year ago when they were discussing it...
-Adam
Re:Give whatever you feel they deserve.
on
Christmas Bonuses?
·
· Score: 1
What a double-standard. If a wife buys her husband a set of power tools as a gift, you know you won't hear him complaining. =P
When I hear my wife call up her friends and say, "Hey, you've got to come over and see this new vacuum cleaner my husband gave me! It can really rip through these rooms!" then I'll start thinking of household chore tools as power tools.
Most of the muscles controlling the fingers are in the forearm. You should be able to either detect the movement of these muscles, or the electrical signals that make it to the surface of the skin, and have a general idea of the position of the fingers, wrist, forearm, etc.
I've sent Candy over to give you your hugs. Be on the lookout for a 350lb, Male couch potato.
Should be quite an experience - let me know if this invention is as satisfying as I expect it to be.
-Adam
Give whatever you feel they deserve.
on
Christmas Bonuses?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I've never received larger than 2% of my salary during bonus time. I suspect $500 is 'enough', but if you can afford to give $1,500, then why not? There is no such thing as 'too much' unless it means you'll have to skimp on other business needs next year.
You might also consider giving gifts in addition to a bonus. The percieved value of a gift is often greater than it's actual cost - spend $400 on an IPOD for each employee and give them a $500 bonus.
Just don't give them gifts that are directly related to their daily work - it'll seem cheap (ie, never give your wife a vacuum cleaner as a 'gift', under pain of death)
I've been dealing with mirrored RAID cheap harddrives for a couple of years now on medium duty systems (in harsh environments), and I can tell you two things:
1) I haven't yet seen a situation where both hard drives failed simultaneously so badly that I couldn't recover most* of the data.
2) RAID is not a replacement for a good backup.
No matter what, you should keep a seperate copy of the data at minimum separate from the computer itself, ideally offsite. You should also have a mirrored setup so a small failure (one drive, or fried computer with still working drive) won't set you back to your previous backup data.
What I've done temporarily is use a HD caddy (but now I'd go with a USB 2.0 or Firewire drive) to take an occasional snapshot which I can take offsite, storing it in a different place.
You should plan on expending at least $200 for a decent backup solution.
Further, I suspect you overestimate your backup needs. Compression helps with most everything. If you are backing up movies, burn them to DVD and keep them offsite. If you are backing up programs, burn those to disc and keep them offsite. If you are backing up pictures, burn them the DVD and keep them off site. You only need to continually re-backup items that change over time, and that data is vastly smaller than what you think you need to back up right now, and generally can be compressed up the wazzoo.
But you're looking for the easy way out. So, do mirrored drives, and try to get an external drive at some point later in time.
-Adam
*I did have lightening take out a server, which fried everything in that computer. I'm glad I had a regular backup. For kicks, I tried anyway, and one hard drives still worked, but a small portion of the data was corrupt, and it wasn't worth fixing since I had a known good backup from the night before.
"Using Natural Language it is possible to ask questions in plain English, without training. Things like "What is my next appointment?" or "Call Jonnhy at home". And the PDA will act on that."
"Who's Jonnhy?" she said, and smiled in her special way...
" Is there a better balance than mandatory IP surrendering?"
You say that as though the employee has some rights to the IP that he/she has to give up. This is the problem - the employee owns none of the "intellectual property" that they are being paid to produce for the company.
In our current age, ideas are important, not people. People produce ideas that can be bought, sold, traded, and sued for. The people themselves are but producers - once the milk is given to the machine, the cow has no recourse or claim on it.
Companies will keep their best cows well-fed, but once bessie turns bad milk, guess which packing plant she's off to?
The relationship between an employee and a business is a business relationship. If it isn't profitable for both sides of the relationship, then one side or the other has to take action to re-balance it, or find a business relationship which is balanced somewhere else.
The person asking about patent IP rights, if they want a bigger piece of the pie, needs to seek change in this relationship. They won't be able to change transactions that have already occured (ie, no bonus for previously transferred patent) but they can try to get the company to sign an agreement to share future patents or profits based on those patents. I'd simply go for a bonus, though, since the company has a myraid of ways of making it look like the patent has little value, or keeping the employee from using it legitimately. Give it to them, get the money, and forget about it - it's the best deal yet.
Of course, the company won't go for it because it's not a good relationship for them, but hey, it's his choice.
Turn on your portable radio. You'll get all the news, repeated ad infinitum, all day, every day.
Radio is always a good option for emergencies - small, portable, lasts long on batteries, and even if the 'net and most tv stations go down, radio will still be working.
Seriously. There've been so many times when nerds have asserted that, "This'll be the case to prove the GPL! Yeah!" and they never come to fruition.
So no, I'm not sitting eagerly in my chair waiting for the trail to start. This is a non-story that reporters are following because nothing better is worth writing about right now.
"My employer has recently filed a patent application for something I invented."
And yet you still left out something very important - you invented it on company time (or even used a little bit of company time) and you've been on the payroll since before concieved of the invention, and , in fact, you were employed in order to benefit the company - including anything you invent while working for the company.
You have been paid for, are being paid for, and will likely continue to be paid for the invention - it's called a salary or paycheck.
I'm sorry if you didn't understand the terms of your employment.
Besides, you can get the answer to your question from Google, which will show you that it's a fairly commonly asked question
As far as what is typical in the industry - typically the inventor gets nothing but name recognition. If the invention makes the company a million, they tend to treat you better, but it still shows as zip on your paycheck (except your raises may be slightly higher than usual for awhile)
You might be able to work something out if you are a contractor and can show that you developed the invention for general use in your contracting business, and not for this specific client, but then you get to be the cost bearer of obtaining the patent, and likely (as with the vast majority of inventions) you will never recoup those costs.
It's better to put the invention down on your resume, and work it from the angle of, "I can do good things for your company" rather than trying to say with your current employer, "Hey, where's my piece of the pie?". Likely your piece of the pie will be somewhere outside the office very shortly thereafter.
Come on, we can talk about the programs that use TCP/IP and complain about them, or we can go to the source - the enabler of all this spying and ading, and persecute TCP/IP itself, which is what we should have been doing all along.
Take a page from the lawyers. Don't go after the file traders, go after the programs that enable file sharing. Don't go after the drug addicts, go after their dealers. Don't go after the women having abortions, get their docters. Don't go after the spammers, get their ISPs.
This whole TCP/IP thing was fun in its heyday, but it's nothing but trouble now. Let's ditch this ride while we've still got momentum, and find the next big wave.
Slashdot Mirror
These detectors do several things:
Look for extremely intense and brief flashes in the IR region at a specific frequency (or more than one frequency.
Strobe lights emit very intense, very brief flashes of light which are loaded with IR. Their controllers flash them at the correct frequency.
The detectors also take into account reflections and other problems which might cause the detector to misread a signal.
The reason why this was never really a problem before is that strobe lights are illegal on cars - it turn them into emergency response vehicles, and is against the regulations that concern lights on cars. Further, they are very visible, and can be caught relatively easily. An IR filter over the strobe would reduce this problem, but it would be absorbing so much energy it would get too hot to handle (solvable problem). Lastly the detectors require a very exact frequency, which requires more than a generic radioshack strobe controller. - suffice to say they were not easy for an average joe to build and use.
With the relatively recent advent of high power, cheap IR LEDs this is now possible for the average joe. The LEDs are still fairly expensive for the power required, but certianly not out of reach. The companies selling these things are making a huge bundle of money, though. $300 for probably less than $20 worth of parts and labor.
It's an issue that will likely take a technological and hands-on solution. Many installed detectors are already capable of being used with more complex transmitters, they just haven't enabled that feature. Probably can't even find the manual.
-Adam
For the Google Disabled:
A vertical market is a particular industry or group of enterprises in which similar products or services are developed and marketed using similar methods (and to whom goods and services can be sold). Broad examples of vertical markets are: insurance, real estate, banking, heavy manufacturing, retail, transportation, hospitals, and government.
Vertical market software is software aimed at a particular vertical market and can be contrasted with horizontal market software (such as word processors and spreadsheet programs) which can be used in a cross-section of industries.
Taken from here.
I personally like the "Broad example of a vertical market" phrase...
-Adam
Depending on just how vertical the application is, I predict the following:
1) Companies wanting to use it will have a staff member to manage it, who will likely be able to modify code as needed.
2) Assuming the program is internal to the company, it will not be distributed - therefore there is no need to share code changes back with you and the community at large.
So it's likely you will have some users, but few contributers.
But that's based on the assumption that it is of little use to more than a handful of people/companies around the world, and that it is only to be used internally to the company.
-Adam
THE SUN IS EXPLODING!!!!!
RUN AWAY! RUN AWA - What? oh, yeah, that's a good thing. Sorry 'bout that folks. Won't happen again. I'll just go find another catastrophe to panic about...
-Adam
Most of those who've hung around slashdot long enough to actually be interested in this particular discussion will be familiar with the many reasons for and against prepending GNU in front of any software which appears to require GNU tools to maintain core functionality.
I'd like to re-iterate my position that those who feel it should be added, as in 'GNU-LINUX', are askin' for a smackin'.
That's all I'm saying.
-Adam
polotics: Annoying tick like creatures which infest polo fields and are the scourge of polo teams world wide.
politics: Annoying tick like ideas which infest sensible discussions and are the scourge of intelligent people world-wide.
Freudian slip, or forgot to preview: You decide.
-Adam
So called 'GNU-Darwin' is NOT OpenDarwin so far as I can tell from their respective websites. Apple is not associated with GNU-Darwin in any way, other than GNU-Darwin seems to have stolen the mascot, the name (adding GNU - how original and trademark avoiding), and the source.
Seems to me that this 'GNU-Darwin' is no more than a political website, probably distributing the stock Darwin unchanged.
Stupid, stupid people. This can of worms has been opened before - don't they know that polotics is not considered 'added-value'? And if they don't have anything substantial to add to the core Darwin, they won't last more than it takes for them to come up with some other bandwagon.
-Adam
Porting the table structure is not the same as, oh, porting the actual program so that it reads and writes to PostgreSQL.
What exactly do you mean by giving us a database configuration file, and then saying you've ported compiere to postgresql? Where are the modified java files?
-Adam
At the time they made the decision to start building the bridge MySQL didn't support triggers, transactions, and stored procedures.
Triggers are not currently supported, and I believe that the transactions and stored procedures are not as functionals as Oracle's. While PostgreSQL doesn't support these as fully either, it does support triggers which are not trivial to emulate in java (not to mention resource intensive)
At least, that's what I remember from a year ago when they were discussing it...
-Adam
What a double-standard. If a wife buys her husband a set of power tools as a gift, you know you won't hear him complaining. =P
When I hear my wife call up her friends and say, "Hey, you've got to come over and see this new vacuum cleaner my husband gave me! It can really rip through these rooms!" then I'll start thinking of household chore tools as power tools.
-Adam
Most of the muscles controlling the fingers are in the forearm. You should be able to either detect the movement of these muscles, or the electrical signals that make it to the surface of the skin, and have a general idea of the position of the fingers, wrist, forearm, etc.
Just a simple band around the forearm...
-Adam
hosts
212.58.235.166 goatse.cx www.goatse.cx
There. All better!
-Adam
I've sent Candy over to give you your hugs. Be on the lookout for a 350lb, Male couch potato.
Should be quite an experience - let me know if this invention is as satisfying as I expect it to be.
-Adam
I've never received larger than 2% of my salary during bonus time. I suspect $500 is 'enough', but if you can afford to give $1,500, then why not? There is no such thing as 'too much' unless it means you'll have to skimp on other business needs next year.
You might also consider giving gifts in addition to a bonus. The percieved value of a gift is often greater than it's actual cost - spend $400 on an IPOD for each employee and give them a $500 bonus.
Just don't give them gifts that are directly related to their daily work - it'll seem cheap (ie, never give your wife a vacuum cleaner as a 'gift', under pain of death)
-Adam
I've been dealing with mirrored RAID cheap harddrives for a couple of years now on medium duty systems (in harsh environments), and I can tell you two things:
1) I haven't yet seen a situation where both hard drives failed simultaneously so badly that I couldn't recover most* of the data.
2) RAID is not a replacement for a good backup.
No matter what, you should keep a seperate copy of the data at minimum separate from the computer itself, ideally offsite. You should also have a mirrored setup so a small failure (one drive, or fried computer with still working drive) won't set you back to your previous backup data.
What I've done temporarily is use a HD caddy (but now I'd go with a USB 2.0 or Firewire drive) to take an occasional snapshot which I can take offsite, storing it in a different place.
You should plan on expending at least $200 for a decent backup solution.
Further, I suspect you overestimate your backup needs. Compression helps with most everything. If you are backing up movies, burn them to DVD and keep them offsite. If you are backing up programs, burn those to disc and keep them offsite. If you are backing up pictures, burn them the DVD and keep them off site. You only need to continually re-backup items that change over time, and that data is vastly smaller than what you think you need to back up right now, and generally can be compressed up the wazzoo.
But you're looking for the easy way out. So, do mirrored drives, and try to get an external drive at some point later in time.
-Adam
*I did have lightening take out a server, which fried everything in that computer. I'm glad I had a regular backup. For kicks, I tried anyway, and one hard drives still worked, but a small portion of the data was corrupt, and it wasn't worth fixing since I had a known good backup from the night before.
Dangit, Cowboyneal! I told you to turn off that packet sniffer at MAE East!
Now look what you've done.
-Adam
"Using Natural Language it is possible to ask questions in plain English, without training. Things like "What is my next appointment?" or "Call Jonnhy at home". And the PDA will act on that."
"Who's Jonnhy?" she said, and smiled in her special way...
-Adam
" Is there a better balance than mandatory IP surrendering?"
You say that as though the employee has some rights to the IP that he/she has to give up. This is the problem - the employee owns none of the "intellectual property" that they are being paid to produce for the company.
In our current age, ideas are important, not people. People produce ideas that can be bought, sold, traded, and sued for. The people themselves are but producers - once the milk is given to the machine, the cow has no recourse or claim on it.
Companies will keep their best cows well-fed, but once bessie turns bad milk, guess which packing plant she's off to?
The relationship between an employee and a business is a business relationship. If it isn't profitable for both sides of the relationship, then one side or the other has to take action to re-balance it, or find a business relationship which is balanced somewhere else.
The person asking about patent IP rights, if they want a bigger piece of the pie, needs to seek change in this relationship. They won't be able to change transactions that have already occured (ie, no bonus for previously transferred patent) but they can try to get the company to sign an agreement to share future patents or profits based on those patents. I'd simply go for a bonus, though, since the company has a myraid of ways of making it look like the patent has little value, or keeping the employee from using it legitimately. Give it to them, get the money, and forget about it - it's the best deal yet.
Of course, the company won't go for it because it's not a good relationship for them, but hey, it's his choice.
-Adam
Turn on your portable radio. You'll get all the news, repeated ad infinitum, all day, every day.
Radio is always a good option for emergencies - small, portable, lasts long on batteries, and even if the 'net and most tv stations go down, radio will still be working.
-Adam
Don't you read your email? These kind of 'upgrades' are already available!
-Adam
I'm not even getting my popcorn out.
Seriously. There've been so many times when nerds have asserted that, "This'll be the case to prove the GPL! Yeah!" and they never come to fruition.
So no, I'm not sitting eagerly in my chair waiting for the trail to start. This is a non-story that reporters are following because nothing better is worth writing about right now.
Oh well.
-Adam
"Now, as to the practicality of stereogenics and its use in zero calorie metabolism: this is probably less difficult than separating U238 and U235"
Well duh. I can seperate sweets from no sweets using my tongue. You ain't gettin' me to put U-whatsit and U-whatsit plus 3 on my tongue.
Nuh-uh. No way!
How much was that again? Oh, well, what's face cancer compared to $7/hr! Bring on the uranium!
Moral of the story - you can get any labor done for the right price. The right price is however low your conscience will let you sleep at night with.
-Adam
Please note: This post is not funny. Well, maybe a little.
"My employer has recently filed a patent application for something I invented."
And yet you still left out something very important - you invented it on company time (or even used a little bit of company time) and you've been on the payroll since before concieved of the invention, and , in fact, you were employed in order to benefit the company - including anything you invent while working for the company.
You have been paid for, are being paid for, and will likely continue to be paid for the invention - it's called a salary or paycheck.
I'm sorry if you didn't understand the terms of your employment.
Besides, you can get the answer to your question from Google, which will show you that it's a fairly commonly asked question
As far as what is typical in the industry - typically the inventor gets nothing but name recognition. If the invention makes the company a million, they tend to treat you better, but it still shows as zip on your paycheck (except your raises may be slightly higher than usual for awhile)
You might be able to work something out if you are a contractor and can show that you developed the invention for general use in your contracting business, and not for this specific client, but then you get to be the cost bearer of obtaining the patent, and likely (as with the vast majority of inventions) you will never recoup those costs.
It's better to put the invention down on your resume, and work it from the angle of, "I can do good things for your company" rather than trying to say with your current employer, "Hey, where's my piece of the pie?". Likely your piece of the pie will be somewhere outside the office very shortly thereafter.
-Adam
Come on, we can talk about the programs that use TCP/IP and complain about them, or we can go to the source - the enabler of all this spying and ading, and persecute TCP/IP itself, which is what we should have been doing all along.
Take a page from the lawyers. Don't go after the file traders, go after the programs that enable file sharing. Don't go after the drug addicts, go after their dealers. Don't go after the women having abortions, get their docters. Don't go after the spammers, get their ISPs.
This whole TCP/IP thing was fun in its heyday, but it's nothing but trouble now. Let's ditch this ride while we've still got momentum, and find the next big wave.
-Adam
"You are not our target audience."
-Adam