You would still have a need for different icons, depending on the amount of detail the interface is capable of rendering. A single SVG icon would be either too plain for a 1600x1200 screen or too complex for a 90x90 cellphone display.
Oh, come on. It's a simple matter to create a icon that is as complex as it needs to be (ie, you don't need a super complex icon for Staroffice) regardless of the output device.
It's then a simple matter of 'culling' the detail. on a 90x90 cellphone display, you simply don't render objects that are smaller than a pixel or two. In that case you end up with only the larger aspects of the icon. Furthermore, the device may avoid rendering gradients, going for a solid color, etc.
The designers ought to be aware of this, however, and make sure there are some larger as well as detailed aspects to every icon.
But the real idea behind an icon is that it is the same angular size relative to the distance to the human eye, regardless of the resolution of the display device. This means that the icon on a monitor 24" from the eye would be about 1" by 1" regardles of the resolution. Since the human eye has an inherent resolution limitation then certian details are not practical in the icon since they would not be resolved by the eye, even though the display may be capable of rendering them.
Similarily, a stadium size display need not render a lot of small details since the eye is more than 10 or 50 feet away, and, again, the eye's resolution wouldn't be able to resolve a detail that is only an inch large on the display.
I suspect a number of people are wondering why SVG is important to the desktop. There is one major reason to have SVG as part of the normal program rendering. Several smaller reasons, too.
Objects can be clearly rendered in SVG regardless of the output device resolution.
We are seeing small 15" laptop screens with resolutions of 1920x1200. Soon we will have desktop monitors with higher and higher resolutions. This is because the profit margin in low resolution LCD monitors is quickly becoming very thin. Manufacturers are going to try and differentiate their products by touting the clarity and color rendition of better, higher resolution screens.
So the operating system designer doesn't have to
Create an icon for each resolution
Use icon scaling
And make many sections of code that will make sure the important things are on screen and usable.
Many applications could and should run well on a PDA (4", 200x320) a cell phone(1.2" 90x90) and a scientific visualization workstation (120", 6400x4000) without device specific code or modes.
The smaller reasons include much less data - if a graphics card rendered SVG, then the connection between the computer and the card could be slow and very long distance. Hard drives space isn't an issue, except in power-conscious embedded areas where smaller graphics files could make a difference.
Lastly, rendering speed improvements could be realized. Aside from dedicated HW doing the rendering, if the OS did it in a trusted manner then it could be faster than many libraries and/or programmer hacks. Programs could as a result be smaller, since they don't have to maintain as much graphics, layout, and UI information.
In short, there are many good reasons to include SVG in the lower system level - mostly looking toward the future of hardware, but when it's here, won't it be nice to be ready?
" If you actually believe that a Virus can "fry your motherboard" then you sound like the ideal / typical mac user..'
Not your motherboard so much as fry your processor. Several early motherboards that set the processor speed and core voltages in BIOS could be exploited in such a way that software on the system could also change the voltage and clock speed. Set the voltage another volt higher and the processer would be damaged.
I don't know the exact mechanism that the motherboard manufacturers are using now which prevents software from changing these settings while still allowing BIOS to do so (or only 'approved' software - such as Gigabyte's EasyTune utility), but the problem hasn't appeared since the mid-late 90's. Of course, the Intel processors don't damage as easily as they used to either.
"I've replaced PRAM batteries, verified power supply voltages, pressed the CUDA switch, and done combinations of the above."
Look, there are many ways a powersupply can fail and still appear to have the correct output voltages. For instance, the powersupply has a power good signal going to the motherboard. The PS determines whether it's within its specifications, and when it is (some mS after actual turn on) it asserts the signal, and the motherboard comes out of reset. It could be that either the powersupply is not asserting the signal correctly, or that it is still out of spec.
But it could be a dozen other problems. Until you swap it for a known good PS, you cannot know for sure that the PS is good. (other than, perhaps, putting it in another good system and powering it up there)
Here is the pinout of a dual G4 powersupply. I suspect that the pinout is substantially similar. You may be able to force the PS on, but you'd have to find and assert the power good signal (I doubt that the supply doesn't have one - chances are they made this pinout with a multimeter, and there's no easy way to find the power good without a scope or analyzer)
But I suspect that you'll spend less money and time by simply getting a new PS and replacing it.
Please note that powersupplies contain many parts that fail over time. Aside from the obvious fan, the electrolytic caps eventually dry out, causing out of spec voltages, out of spec ripple, and out of spec regulation. You won't be able to see the ripple on the average multimeter.
Also note that computer hardware troubleshooting is a black art, and should only be practised by mages trained in this specialty.
This mission would be titled Shenzhou 5 being the fifth mission with the Chinese made Shenzhou space capsule.
Among other instruments onboard, they will be deploying the world's first open relay SMTP satellite, usable with a directv or primestar dish and a common 802.11a/b/g bridge.
Later 2005:
In other news, a Chinese satellite exploded over asia yeasterday. Authorites are investigating, but an unnamed internal source indicated that the "... server couldn't handle the 3 billion emails per second..." that apparently up until yesterday were flowing through the relay.
Next day:
Microsoft is claiming victory as hundreds of US Spammers declare bankruptcy.
More useful to the internet denizen would be free online textbooks. They can, for many people, replace the teacher. The last bit that remains missing could easily be filled by a mentor - even if they aren't local.
Notice how the Linux and other free software/open source software communities have online How-tos, books, and free mentoring? One of the keys to success for many organizations is educating its users, and providing easy education to potential users.
MIT isn't just doing this out of the goodness of its heart - but hopefully other institutions will follow suit. Hopefully free or very cheap broadband will come about, with a computer in every household. Every person can become whatever they want --> Which may not be a good thing for some people, but it is, after all, their decision.
I had a professor tell us this story of one of his previous coworkers:
She had designed and implemented a simple service on top of unix which was accessed by a moderate number of users. When the time to put it into production came, she looked at her remaining few crashing bugs and determined to put in a monitoring loop that would reboot the server if such a situation happened. She also determined that no data loss would occur.
Why did she do this workaround, and how did she determine what bugs she could leave in?
She had a 5 digit company phone extension. She determined that someone could call her, if she let her phone ring twice, in a short period of time. During this time the server would have finished rebooting and start serving again. She could answer the call and simply say, "Try it again", whereupon the user would find that his operation worked this time.
So remember - if your server can reboot itself (and does so automatically and safely) before they can finish dialing tech support, you have no worries!
Firstly, let's address the cost. They won't cost less. Sorry. Professors and book companies (and even universities) exact their toll in royalties. They won't lower the cost of an electronic edition. In fact, many professors must publish books because they do not make enough money teaching and through research. Defining 'enough money' is left as an exercise for the reader.
But really, publishing an electronic book is just as, and possibly more, expensive than a paper book. You don't get calls the night before finals at the publisher house, "I'm having trouble turning the page..." or, more realistically, "The index is missing/doesn't work, etc"
Tech support is only half the problem. The EBook must also then work on at least Windows 95-xp, Mac 8 and above, Linux (dozens of variations), and a few unix OSs.
Furthermore, the book is expected to work on any future machines invented in the next dozen years - with some books needing an indefinite lifetime.
Then comes the problem of errata and editions. How often do you release a new edition? How do you package it? What features do you support? At this point each textbook is expected to have the text, a few apendices (answers, basic concepts, refreshers, glossaries) and an index and bibliography. These are easy to add to the computer version, but then you can't compete on level ground with other publishers with greater resources. Given the choice between a complete Ebook with basic search, and a not-so complete EBook with search, interactive examples, etc the professors are going to choose the inferior book because of the bells and whistles. Books will become all about the bells and whistles.
Because of that professors will be hard pressed to add new, expensive, and time consuming material such as videos, and perhaps even full lectures to the "EBooks". A publisher simply won't accept an EBook unless it can win out over another already existing EBook in the flash, fit and finish department.
Besides all this, the professors using the text must adapt to the new teaching style an EBook requires - and you'd have to double publish the book and EBook so nobody would be left out.
The experience I've had is with a few books (in computer courses) where the book includes a CD with the full searchable text, and another book where the complete text is available for free online. I used the online one, but I only toyed with the CD one. The online version didn't have page numbers that corresponded with the printed text, but otherwise was usable as long as I knew what chapter and subchapter we were talking about in class.
In short, they may come, but only when professors themselves decide to ask publishers to publish their works in ebook format.
I agree that in this case you are right. I suspect, however, that while a document may describe terms of agreement on how it is to be signed there must be circumstances in which new forms of signing must be allowed.
A document such as this could say, "Must be signed in one's own blood" but the court may well choose to accept that the document is legally binding with an ink signature. In this case a digital signature which could be verified/authenticated/etc may well be legally binding.
I doubt the document says, "No other form of signature will be accepted." But since I haven't read it, perhaps this exclusionary sentence is used. Otherwise it would be inclusionary.
Of course, I'm no lawyer, haven't read the complaint, haven't read the agreement, and am simply too bored to ignore an anonymous coward.
Now if they had only used Passport, then MS would have been in the sticky position of saying, "Passport isn't legally binding in our case, but please continue to store your personal information and credit card info in it because it's legally binding everywhere else..."
The decision we made when we designed the thing was based on the idea that people would stop riding it when the battery low light came on. Since then we've realized a few things:
1) People treat battery low as "still works under all conditions" as they might if it were a gas tank. But the battery is unable to deliver the instantaneous power needed to go over certian obstacles when partially discharged.
2) The battery low signal is set too low, since even a mild partial discharge will not supply enough instantaneous power for critical maneuvers.
3) Li-Ion batteries are dieing in a pattern which we did not expect. The processor needs to assume there is less power available than what it was previously calculating.
Upshot: The software "upgrade" will give you about 10 minutes of ride time on a full charge before turning on the low battery light, then the alarm. Shortly thereafter the unit will stop in place and use its remaining power simply to stay upright.
Internal memo: Design an "upgrade" battery pack that doubles the range to 20 minutes! We'll make a killing!
This is not unlike asking, "I want to take the drive electronics off the hard drive and read and write to the platter with the existing head and motors. How do I do that?"
Not only are different print heads from the different manufacturers driven differently, printheads within a single manufacturer are driven differently. There are several ways to eject a drop of ink from the head, and several ways to adjust its trajectory in the air. I suspect the industry has largely moved to one or two methods that are similar, and I also suspect that the driving electronics are very similar, at least from a high level view.
What you'll find, however, is that each printer has a specific ink, a specific nozzle, and a specific distance to the media, such that you will probably find as many similarities as you will find differences between two printers.
Why is this important? This is the reason why very few people have done this sort of endeavor.
However, you are probably looking for a low resolution (100-200 dpi), and are only looking at doing one of these things. so go get a cheap printer and an oscilliscope and read the voltages present at the head when it's printing. You will likely need to duplicate the voltage and pulse length, but you can probably ignore the pulse shape and perhaps even the slew rate since you are going to have a lower resolution and you won't care if the thing breaks down in 1000 hours rather than 10000 hours.
If you trace the circuitry, you might find they use separate chips to drive the head, and will produce the right logic levels given a simple digital command - some judicious signal hunting will tell you all you need (or some good data sheets). This might give you an edge, since you wouldn't have to create your own drivers.
If you want to try and use more of the printer, then you can hack the sensor that tells it how far along the track it's gone. Just expand it (digitally or by building a new sensor) and then hook its stepper outputs to a higher current drive and have that drive the real stepper. Just magnify everything. You'll have to deal with a low ink output, though, so there's always some gotcha.
Then you get to enjoy trying to keep the print head exactly x millimeters from the paper across the 60" width. Usually this is done with a long, large, rigid drum os some sort and some tensioning drums.
You didn't give us much info though, so I can only answer the question you have, not solve the problem you have. What about your project makes a pen plotter type system inapropiate?
Beekley X-SPOTS more flexible material contours to the breast under compression, making it more comfortable for the patient. X-SPOTS medical-grade, hypoallergenic adhesive is especially appreciated by older patients' sensitive skin. Each marker is latex-free, single-use and sanitary.
It's the same tactics Microsoft employs, only more so. They are probably making very little, if anything, on the seagate deal directly (they, in fact, may be paying to have it installed.
What they are expecting to make money on is the click 'n run subscriptions - there may be a trial period included, but it probably isn't longer than 30 or maybe even 90 days.
At that point, format, reinstall windows, and use all the old software that you've gotten for the last 10 years.
there already is an anon non karma whore post of the article... mod it up instead of this whore!
Ah, another which values karma so much that he feels everyone else must also believe it to be of great value.
Logically, however, posting it as myself makes sense. I post it started off as 2 points, and it only requires 3 more votes to make it visible to all. The average anonymous post, however, requires 4 votes, thus wasting a vote which could be used more appropiately for an on topic comment.
I was at the cap when they showed you the actual number of points. If there's still a cap I probably have it. I don't care either way - mod me up, mod me down, when I post I feel it's important to do so. People apparently agree with me as I have very few posts which are modded down, and many are modded up. Check out my comments page if you want to get a flavor of my rapier (sp?) wit, and insightful commentary. Then make me your enemy if it pleases you.
Sorry to have offended you by doing something that is bad with your assumed motive, but good with my intent.
Also below:
Our students this semester in 6.171, Software Engineering for Internet Applications have divided themselves into roughly three groups. One third has chosen to use Microsoft.NET, building pages in C#/ASP.NET connecting to SQL Server. One third has chosen to use scripting languages such as PHP connecting to PostgreSQL and sometimes Oracle. The final third, which seems to be struggling the most, is using Java Server Pages (JSP) with Oracle on Linux. JSP is fantastically simpler than "J2EE", which is the recommended-by-Sun way of building applications, but still it seems to be too complex for seniors and graduate students in the MIT computer science program, despite the fact that they all had at least one semester of Java experience in 6.170.
After researching how to do bind variables in Java (see the very end of http://philip.greenspun.com/internet-application-w orkbook/software-structure), which turns out to be much harder and more error-prone than in 20-year-old C interfaces to relational databases, I had an epiphany: Java is the SUV of programming tools.
A project done in Java will cost 5 times as much, take twice as long, and be harder to maintain than a project done in a scripting language such as PHP or Perl. People who are serious about getting the job done on time and under budget will use tools such as Visual Basic (controlled all the machines that decoded the human genome). But the programmers and managers using Java will feel good about themselves because they are using a tool that, in theory, has a lot of power for handling problems of tremendous complexity. Just like the suburbanite who drives his SUV to the 7-11 on a paved road but feels good because in theory he could climb a 45-degree dirt slope. If a programmer is attacking a truly difficult problem he or she will generally have to use a language with systems programming and dynamic type extension capability, such as Lisp. This corresponds to the situation in which my friend, the proud owner of an original-style Hummer, got stuck in the sand on his first off-road excursion; an SUV can't handle a true off-road adventure for which a tracked vehicle is required.
With Web applications, nearly all of the engineering happens in the SQL database and the interaction design, which is embedded in the page flow links. None of the extra power of Java is useful when the source of persistence is a relational database management system such as Oracle or SQL Server. Mostly what you get with Java are reams of repetitive declarations at the top of every script so that the relevant code for serving a page is buried several screens down. With a dynamic language such as Lisp, PHP, Perl, Tcl, you could do bind variables by having the database interface look at local variables in the caller's environment. With Java the programmer is counting question marks in the SQL query and saying "Associate the 7th question mark with the number 4247", an action that will introduce a bug into the program as soon as the SQL query is modified (since now the 7th question mark has been moved to become the 8th question mark in the query).
Look, rebel scum, I know you're all up in arms about how bad the last two were and how bad this ones going to be, and you're all talkin' 'bout how you'll wait until it comes out on TV, blah, blah, blah.
But let's face it - nothing any better is going to be on at the theater, and you've seen all the other ones, so you're gonna go see this one as well. You know it, I know it, the dark side is calling and you're gonna suck it.
Then you'll complain in the following 'review' story on slashdot about how you were right, it sucked, and you wasted money and time.
Let's just cut to the chase. You're most likely a guy. You like action scenes. The movie could suck, the characters and plot could suck, but as long as it has one or two good fight scenes, you'll be all over it.
Nothing to be ashamed of. Go to the theater (because you don't have the big screen and kick-butt sound system you are planning on building someday), pay up, enjoy the fighting, and go home and thencomplain about it.
For a minute there I thought they added a wild card character, so I could have a domain like *iscool.com which would match adamiscool or robertiscool, or spamiscool...
Re:Yes, a cat's got my tongue, OK?
on
Can You Raed Tihs?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Yes, and it's quite simple. The script you used scrambles words randomly - again agian aagin aaign aigan aiagn - become seperate words to the compressor. Instead of changing every occurance of the word again into a short binary string, it has to treat each iteration seperately with their own binary string (simplified - compression is more complex, but the basic idea is the same)
In other words, the scramble.pl adds machine randomness to a rather organized and non-random set of data. Humans can still parse it (meaning that the data is very redundant) but the machine cannot compressed this 'more random' data.
With all this evidence of footprints and sightings, I'm simply surprised no one has made a good discovery of feces or urine samples which show the various characteristics of the so called 'sasquatch'. Footprints and photographs are easy to find and fake - poop is not so easy (does it contain any processed food? Human! Does it contain samples of its own hair? Study the hair! What kind and amount of bacteria are present. etc)
It would be better if one could find skeletal remains as well - It's unlikely that they are immortal - but if they are, then I could see that they might be intelligent enough to avoid discovery as a species, hiding all evidence (carcass remnants, droppings, etc). Of course they'd also be on the internet making sure good evidence is never discussed... Hmmmm....
Slashdot Mirror
You would still have a need for different icons, depending on the amount of detail the interface is capable of rendering. A single SVG icon would be either too plain for a 1600x1200 screen or too complex for a 90x90 cellphone display.
Oh, come on. It's a simple matter to create a icon that is as complex as it needs to be (ie, you don't need a super complex icon for Staroffice) regardless of the output device.
It's then a simple matter of 'culling' the detail. on a 90x90 cellphone display, you simply don't render objects that are smaller than a pixel or two. In that case you end up with only the larger aspects of the icon. Furthermore, the device may avoid rendering gradients, going for a solid color, etc.
The designers ought to be aware of this, however, and make sure there are some larger as well as detailed aspects to every icon.
But the real idea behind an icon is that it is the same angular size relative to the distance to the human eye, regardless of the resolution of the display device. This means that the icon on a monitor 24" from the eye would be about 1" by 1" regardles of the resolution. Since the human eye has an inherent resolution limitation then certian details are not practical in the icon since they would not be resolved by the eye, even though the display may be capable of rendering them.
Similarily, a stadium size display need not render a lot of small details since the eye is more than 10 or 50 feet away, and, again, the eye's resolution wouldn't be able to resolve a detail that is only an inch large on the display.
-Adam
Objects can be clearly rendered in SVG regardless of the output device resolution.
We are seeing small 15" laptop screens with resolutions of 1920x1200. Soon we will have desktop monitors with higher and higher resolutions. This is because the profit margin in low resolution LCD monitors is quickly becoming very thin. Manufacturers are going to try and differentiate their products by touting the clarity and color rendition of better, higher resolution screens.
So the operating system designer doesn't have to
- Create an icon for each resolution
- Use icon scaling
- And make many sections of code that will make sure the important things are on screen and usable.
Many applications could and should run well on a PDA (4", 200x320) a cell phone(1.2" 90x90) and a scientific visualization workstation (120", 6400x4000) without device specific code or modes.The smaller reasons include much less data - if a graphics card rendered SVG, then the connection between the computer and the card could be slow and very long distance. Hard drives space isn't an issue, except in power-conscious embedded areas where smaller graphics files could make a difference.
Lastly, rendering speed improvements could be realized. Aside from dedicated HW doing the rendering, if the OS did it in a trusted manner then it could be faster than many libraries and/or programmer hacks. Programs could as a result be smaller, since they don't have to maintain as much graphics, layout, and UI information.
In short, there are many good reasons to include SVG in the lower system level - mostly looking toward the future of hardware, but when it's here, won't it be nice to be ready?
-Adam
Dia has a windows version. Like many (if not most) free software it's a little rough around the UI edges, but it works and it's free.
-Adam
" If you actually believe that a Virus can "fry your motherboard" then you sound like the ideal / typical mac user..'
Not your motherboard so much as fry your processor. Several early motherboards that set the processor speed and core voltages in BIOS could be exploited in such a way that software on the system could also change the voltage and clock speed. Set the voltage another volt higher and the processer would be damaged.
I don't know the exact mechanism that the motherboard manufacturers are using now which prevents software from changing these settings while still allowing BIOS to do so (or only 'approved' software - such as Gigabyte's EasyTune utility), but the problem hasn't appeared since the mid-late 90's. Of course, the Intel processors don't damage as easily as they used to either.
-Adam
"I've replaced PRAM batteries, verified power supply voltages, pressed the CUDA switch, and done combinations of the above."
Look, there are many ways a powersupply can fail and still appear to have the correct output voltages. For instance, the powersupply has a power good signal going to the motherboard. The PS determines whether it's within its specifications, and when it is (some mS after actual turn on) it asserts the signal, and the motherboard comes out of reset. It could be that either the powersupply is not asserting the signal correctly, or that it is still out of spec.
But it could be a dozen other problems. Until you swap it for a known good PS, you cannot know for sure that the PS is good. (other than, perhaps, putting it in another good system and powering it up there)
Here is the pinout of a dual G4 powersupply. I suspect that the pinout is substantially similar. You may be able to force the PS on, but you'd have to find and assert the power good signal (I doubt that the supply doesn't have one - chances are they made this pinout with a multimeter, and there's no easy way to find the power good without a scope or analyzer)
But I suspect that you'll spend less money and time by simply getting a new PS and replacing it.
Please note that powersupplies contain many parts that fail over time. Aside from the obvious fan, the electrolytic caps eventually dry out, causing out of spec voltages, out of spec ripple, and out of spec regulation. You won't be able to see the ripple on the average multimeter.
Also note that computer hardware troubleshooting is a black art, and should only be practised by mages trained in this specialty.
-Adam
This mission would be titled Shenzhou 5 being the fifth mission with the Chinese made Shenzhou space capsule.
..." that apparently up until yesterday were flowing through the relay.
Among other instruments onboard, they will be deploying the world's first open relay SMTP satellite, usable with a directv or primestar dish and a common 802.11a/b/g bridge.
Later 2005:
In other news, a Chinese satellite exploded over asia yeasterday. Authorites are investigating, but an unnamed internal source indicated that the "... server couldn't handle the 3 billion emails per second
Next day:
Microsoft is claiming victory as hundreds of US Spammers declare bankruptcy.
-Adam
More useful to the internet denizen would be free online textbooks. They can, for many people, replace the teacher. The last bit that remains missing could easily be filled by a mentor - even if they aren't local.
Notice how the Linux and other free software/open source software communities have online How-tos, books, and free mentoring? One of the keys to success for many organizations is educating its users, and providing easy education to potential users.
MIT isn't just doing this out of the goodness of its heart - but hopefully other institutions will follow suit. Hopefully free or very cheap broadband will come about, with a computer in every household. Every person can become whatever they want --> Which may not be a good thing for some people, but it is, after all, their decision.
Freedom to learn.
-Adam
I had a professor tell us this story of one of his previous coworkers:
She had designed and implemented a simple service on top of unix which was accessed by a moderate number of users. When the time to put it into production came, she looked at her remaining few crashing bugs and determined to put in a monitoring loop that would reboot the server if such a situation happened. She also determined that no data loss would occur.
Why did she do this workaround, and how did she determine what bugs she could leave in?
She had a 5 digit company phone extension. She determined that someone could call her, if she let her phone ring twice, in a short period of time. During this time the server would have finished rebooting and start serving again. She could answer the call and simply say, "Try it again", whereupon the user would find that his operation worked this time.
So remember - if your server can reboot itself (and does so automatically and safely) before they can finish dialing tech support, you have no worries!
-Adam
Firstly, let's address the cost. They won't cost less. Sorry. Professors and book companies (and even universities) exact their toll in royalties. They won't lower the cost of an electronic edition. In fact, many professors must publish books because they do not make enough money teaching and through research. Defining 'enough money' is left as an exercise for the reader.
But really, publishing an electronic book is just as, and possibly more, expensive than a paper book. You don't get calls the night before finals at the publisher house, "I'm having trouble turning the page..." or, more realistically, "The index is missing/doesn't work, etc"
Tech support is only half the problem. The EBook must also then work on at least Windows 95-xp, Mac 8 and above, Linux (dozens of variations), and a few unix OSs.
Furthermore, the book is expected to work on any future machines invented in the next dozen years - with some books needing an indefinite lifetime.
Then comes the problem of errata and editions. How often do you release a new edition? How do you package it? What features do you support? At this point each textbook is expected to have the text, a few apendices (answers, basic concepts, refreshers, glossaries) and an index and bibliography. These are easy to add to the computer version, but then you can't compete on level ground with other publishers with greater resources. Given the choice between a complete Ebook with basic search, and a not-so complete EBook with search, interactive examples, etc the professors are going to choose the inferior book because of the bells and whistles. Books will become all about the bells and whistles.
Because of that professors will be hard pressed to add new, expensive, and time consuming material such as videos, and perhaps even full lectures to the "EBooks". A publisher simply won't accept an EBook unless it can win out over another already existing EBook in the flash, fit and finish department.
Besides all this, the professors using the text must adapt to the new teaching style an EBook requires - and you'd have to double publish the book and EBook so nobody would be left out.
The experience I've had is with a few books (in computer courses) where the book includes a CD with the full searchable text, and another book where the complete text is available for free online. I used the online one, but I only toyed with the CD one. The online version didn't have page numbers that corresponded with the printed text, but otherwise was usable as long as I knew what chapter and subchapter we were talking about in class.
In short, they may come, but only when professors themselves decide to ask publishers to publish their works in ebook format.
-Adam
I agree that in this case you are right. I suspect, however, that while a document may describe terms of agreement on how it is to be signed there must be circumstances in which new forms of signing must be allowed.
A document such as this could say, "Must be signed in one's own blood" but the court may well choose to accept that the document is legally binding with an ink signature. In this case a digital signature which could be verified/authenticated/etc may well be legally binding.
I doubt the document says, "No other form of signature will be accepted." But since I haven't read it, perhaps this exclusionary sentence is used. Otherwise it would be inclusionary.
Of course, I'm no lawyer, haven't read the complaint, haven't read the agreement, and am simply too bored to ignore an anonymous coward.
-Adam
Now if they had only used Passport, then MS would have been in the sticky position of saying, "Passport isn't legally binding in our case, but please continue to store your personal information and credit card info in it because it's legally binding everywhere else..."
-Adam
The decision we made when we designed the thing was based on the idea that people would stop riding it when the battery low light came on. Since then we've realized a few things:
1) People treat battery low as "still works under all conditions" as they might if it were a gas tank. But the battery is unable to deliver the instantaneous power needed to go over certian obstacles when partially discharged.
2) The battery low signal is set too low, since even a mild partial discharge will not supply enough instantaneous power for critical maneuvers.
3) Li-Ion batteries are dieing in a pattern which we did not expect. The processor needs to assume there is less power available than what it was previously calculating.
Upshot: The software "upgrade" will give you about 10 minutes of ride time on a full charge before turning on the low battery light, then the alarm. Shortly thereafter the unit will stop in place and use its remaining power simply to stay upright.
Internal memo: Design an "upgrade" battery pack that doubles the range to 20 minutes! We'll make a killing!
-Adam
How to avoid a slashdotting:
1. Refuse all connections where HTTP_REFERRER like "slashdot"
-Adam
This is not unlike asking, "I want to take the drive electronics off the hard drive and read and write to the platter with the existing head and motors. How do I do that?"
Not only are different print heads from the different manufacturers driven differently, printheads within a single manufacturer are driven differently. There are several ways to eject a drop of ink from the head, and several ways to adjust its trajectory in the air. I suspect the industry has largely moved to one or two methods that are similar, and I also suspect that the driving electronics are very similar, at least from a high level view.
What you'll find, however, is that each printer has a specific ink, a specific nozzle, and a specific distance to the media, such that you will probably find as many similarities as you will find differences between two printers.
Why is this important? This is the reason why very few people have done this sort of endeavor.
However, you are probably looking for a low resolution (100-200 dpi), and are only looking at doing one of these things. so go get a cheap printer and an oscilliscope and read the voltages present at the head when it's printing. You will likely need to duplicate the voltage and pulse length, but you can probably ignore the pulse shape and perhaps even the slew rate since you are going to have a lower resolution and you won't care if the thing breaks down in 1000 hours rather than 10000 hours.
If you trace the circuitry, you might find they use separate chips to drive the head, and will produce the right logic levels given a simple digital command - some judicious signal hunting will tell you all you need (or some good data sheets). This might give you an edge, since you wouldn't have to create your own drivers.
If you want to try and use more of the printer, then you can hack the sensor that tells it how far along the track it's gone. Just expand it (digitally or by building a new sensor) and then hook its stepper outputs to a higher current drive and have that drive the real stepper. Just magnify everything. You'll have to deal with a low ink output, though, so there's always some gotcha.
Then you get to enjoy trying to keep the print head exactly x millimeters from the paper across the 60" width. Usually this is done with a long, large, rigid drum os some sort and some tensioning drums.
You didn't give us much info though, so I can only answer the question you have, not solve the problem you have. What about your project makes a pen plotter type system inapropiate?
-Adam
Lets see, at 700 MB each, that works out to about 1700 movies. Plus about 3,000 songs. Sounds good enough for me.
What, is DVD too good for you? 150 DVD movies, with extras.
-Adam
I can see why you might like "x-spots"...
Beekley X-SPOTS more flexible material contours to the breast under compression, making it more comfortable for the patient. X-SPOTS medical-grade, hypoallergenic adhesive is especially appreciated by older patients' sensitive skin. Each marker is latex-free, single-use and sanitary.
-Adam
It's the same tactics Microsoft employs, only more so. They are probably making very little, if anything, on the seagate deal directly (they, in fact, may be paying to have it installed.
What they are expecting to make money on is the click 'n run subscriptions - there may be a trial period included, but it probably isn't longer than 30 or maybe even 90 days.
At that point, format, reinstall windows, and use all the old software that you've gotten for the last 10 years.
-Adam
there already is an anon non karma whore post of the article... mod it up instead of this whore!
Ah, another which values karma so much that he feels everyone else must also believe it to be of great value.
Logically, however, posting it as myself makes sense. I post it started off as 2 points, and it only requires 3 more votes to make it visible to all. The average anonymous post, however, requires 4 votes, thus wasting a vote which could be used more appropiately for an on topic comment.
I was at the cap when they showed you the actual number of points. If there's still a cap I probably have it. I don't care either way - mod me up, mod me down, when I post I feel it's important to do so. People apparently agree with me as I have very few posts which are modded down, and many are modded up. Check out my comments page if you want to get a flavor of my rapier (sp?) wit, and insightful commentary. Then make me your enemy if it pleases you.
Sorry to have offended you by doing something that is bad with your assumed motive, but good with my intent.
-Adam
Google cache of the blog entry.
.NET, building pages in C#/ASP.NET connecting to SQL Server. One third has chosen to use scripting languages such as PHP connecting to PostgreSQL and sometimes Oracle. The final third, which seems to be struggling the most, is using Java Server Pages (JSP) with Oracle on Linux. JSP is fantastically simpler than "J2EE", which is the recommended-by-Sun way of building applications, but still it seems to be too complex for seniors and graduate students in the MIT computer science program, despite the fact that they all had at least one semester of Java experience in 6.170.
w orkbook/software-structure), which turns out to be much harder and more error-prone than in 20-year-old C interfaces to relational databases, I had an epiphany: Java is the SUV of programming tools.
Also below:
Our students this semester in 6.171, Software Engineering for Internet Applications have divided themselves into roughly three groups. One third has chosen to use Microsoft
After researching how to do bind variables in Java (see the very end of http://philip.greenspun.com/internet-application-
A project done in Java will cost 5 times as much, take twice as long, and be harder to maintain than a project done in a scripting language such as PHP or Perl. People who are serious about getting the job done on time and under budget will use tools such as Visual Basic (controlled all the machines that decoded the human genome). But the programmers and managers using Java will feel good about themselves because they are using a tool that, in theory, has a lot of power for handling problems of tremendous complexity. Just like the suburbanite who drives his SUV to the 7-11 on a paved road but feels good because in theory he could climb a 45-degree dirt slope. If a programmer is attacking a truly difficult problem he or she will generally have to use a language with systems programming and dynamic type extension capability, such as Lisp. This corresponds to the situation in which my friend, the proud owner of an original-style Hummer, got stuck in the sand on his first off-road excursion; an SUV can't handle a true off-road adventure for which a tracked vehicle is required.
With Web applications, nearly all of the engineering happens in the SQL database and the interaction design, which is embedded in the page flow links. None of the extra power of Java is useful when the source of persistence is a relational database management system such as Oracle or SQL Server. Mostly what you get with Java are reams of repetitive declarations at the top of every script so that the relevant code for serving a page is buried several screens down. With a dynamic language such as Lisp, PHP, Perl, Tcl, you could do bind variables by having the database interface look at local variables in the caller's environment. With Java the programmer is counting question marks in the SQL query and saying "Associate the 7th question mark with the number 4247", an action that will introduce a bug into the program as soon as the SQL query is modified (since now the 7th question mark has been moved to become the 8th question mark in the query).
-Adam
Look, rebel scum, I know you're all up in arms about how bad the last two were and how bad this ones going to be, and you're all talkin' 'bout how you'll wait until it comes out on TV, blah, blah, blah.
But let's face it - nothing any better is going to be on at the theater, and you've seen all the other ones, so you're gonna go see this one as well. You know it, I know it, the dark side is calling and you're gonna suck it.
Then you'll complain in the following 'review' story on slashdot about how you were right, it sucked, and you wasted money and time.
Let's just cut to the chase. You're most likely a guy. You like action scenes. The movie could suck, the characters and plot could suck, but as long as it has one or two good fight scenes, you'll be all over it.
Nothing to be ashamed of. Go to the theater (because you don't have the big screen and kick-butt sound system you are planning on building someday), pay up, enjoy the fighting, and go home and then complain about it.
-Adam
For a minute there I thought they added a wild card character, so I could have a domain like *iscool.com which would match adamiscool or robertiscool, or spamiscool...
-Adam
Google news link
-Adam
Yes, and it's quite simple. The script you used scrambles words randomly - again agian aagin aaign aigan aiagn - become seperate words to the compressor. Instead of changing every occurance of the word again into a short binary string, it has to treat each iteration seperately with their own binary string (simplified - compression is more complex, but the basic idea is the same)
In other words, the scramble.pl adds machine randomness to a rather organized and non-random set of data. Humans can still parse it (meaning that the data is very redundant) but the machine cannot compressed this 'more random' data.
-Adam
With all this evidence of footprints and sightings, I'm simply surprised no one has made a good discovery of feces or urine samples which show the various characteristics of the so called 'sasquatch'. Footprints and photographs are easy to find and fake - poop is not so easy (does it contain any processed food? Human! Does it contain samples of its own hair? Study the hair! What kind and amount of bacteria are present. etc)
It would be better if one could find skeletal remains as well - It's unlikely that they are immortal - but if they are, then I could see that they might be intelligent enough to avoid discovery as a species, hiding all evidence (carcass remnants, droppings, etc). Of course they'd also be on the internet making sure good evidence is never discussed... Hmmmm....
-Adam
"Case modders have the attention spans of 3-year-olds who hit every button in the elevator."
Actually, you'd be surprised at the attention the average 3 year old has...:-)
-Adam