We can't have a free, stable, mature, secure, cryptographic operating system around because
Terrorists can't afford windows, and those that can are easy to hack into
But if we gave them a free system that can't be hacked into, then we're in deep doo-doo.
What this really means is that we are admitting that a criminal could use a tool more effectively than 'the good guys', so we should prevent anyone from having a good tool.
But, while the funding is a boost, its loss certianly isn't a show stopper, or even a show slower.
Hacking is an addiction. Furthermore, a succesfull cracker does not necessarily make a good security expert. You wouldn't give a 5 time convicted drunk driver their license, even if they haven't touched alcohol for years... Why? Because it can be too easy, too much of a temptation to fall back into old habits.
Maybe you've never felt a true addiction. Perhaps you don't know what it's like to be mentally chained to some action, item, etc. Sure, you get into long programming binges, where you're in 'the zone' for hours, but it's not like you can't go 2 minutes without zoning out of real life and thinking about your program.
When you are addicted to something you very literally are unable to keep your mind off the subject for any length of time.
The chances of an addicted, convicted, and reformed cracker of being tempted and going back to their old ways are so much greater than the chances of a programmer/net admin/whatever who hasn't been addicted that it isn't a reasonable risk to take. You don't give a reformed alcoholic a wine tasting job.
That being said, it's unfair to group people together by any metric. I could say, for instance, that all good criminals are persistant con men. It isn't always true all the time, but when you look at one case at a time it certianly seems so. Most, if not all, of Mitnick's significant exploits weren't brain power, or shear ability to break systems. It was his ability to convince another person that he was authorized to recieve sensitive information, and when he didn't get it from one person he moved on to the next. A very charismatic, persistent con man. Certianly no Carmack.
So it's not fair to lock everyone convicted of computer crimes from using computers again, or even from using computers in the way they used them in their illegal activities.
But if you are shortsighted enough to believe that a true addicted can ever be fully and completely cured... Employer beware...
-Adam
Not quite enough information...
on
Wireless VOIP?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
You've told us these specs:
15 wireless microphones
Base units
Record each signal on it's own 'track'
Up to two hour recording period
Record results to CD
From your further discussion, I'm assuming the following:
Small microphone transmitters, user wearable, light
Mobile users
Small working area (wireless mics, 802.11 don't go very far)
Medium or lower sound quality (good for voice, but not much else or you wouldn't suggest voip)
And this is enough information to suggest exactly what you suggested. If you told us better parameters, such as distance, typical usage (theatre, I'm assuming), obstacles between wireless microphones and recording system, etc.
I wouldn't suggest you do anything with voip right now unless you want to roll your own. It's more expensive, and at this point less mature and dependable than a basic wireless mic system. Unless you like babysitting the recording system...
So go with regular wireless mics. Be aware of contention and crosstalk. You can get wireless mic receivers that will support more than one mic simultaneously, and they are typically rack mountable. Put four 4 channel receivers in a small rack mount box with a rack mount computer. Now look for a multichannel recording card. You could go with 8 individual sound cards, but finding a mobo to support them would be a fun trick) The multichannel card should come with basic multitrack software. Perhaps a programs such as audacity will work with them. Beyond that you should be able to recording the resulting wav files to CD.
I wouldn't bother with having a bunch of little minidiscs of other individual recorders. To many little points of failure.
You might be interested in a few other options. You can get full duplex radios such as those used in cordless telephones from laipac.com. I'm currently using a cordless telephone for bike rides and other short distance communications. Last winter I mulled the idea over in my head of making a voip phone with 16 bit 802.11b cards (compactflash or pcmcia). It would take a relatively low power microcontroller to encode the communications. Since 802.11b doesn't have any real-time capabilites or QOS service, you won't get even packet rates. But since you didn't mention that the sound was going to listened to as it was created, and the computer can buffer just fine, you only need to time stamp each packet and the computer can still do a full recording with only a little buffer at the transmission side.
"In the still of the night, I accepted another dupe. Oh how I love, love to post, promise you'll never post the most, in the still of the night. Shoo dupe dupe du dupe, shoo dupe dupe de waah!"
Because it's bits and bytes, and can be replicated infinitely. So a programmer makes a program in 40 hours, and it's taxed forever, even if the programmer isn't continuing to work on it.
and how would this change...if we did tax software imports?
It would legitimize software as a 'thing', which has the same copyright, property, IP, patent, etc protections as things that exist physically and can't be duplicated for free.
If software is ever to be free, programmers need to be free. For programmers to be free, we must invent real jobs that pay well that a real programmer can do for only a few hours a day. Then it won't matter if your job is shipped out, since your job simply won't exist anymore.
Oh, wait, software will never be free. Sorry, guess you're screwed...
Electric dreams is about an architect who tries to organize his life with a computer. His computer becomes sentient (due to an overdose of information from the company mainframe and subsequent dousing with wine) and they both fall in love with the woman (a cellist in the local symphony) upstairs.
It's got some laughs, lots of old computers, and rather decent 80's music.
It's hard to find now, but since I work for a video chain I was able to get one old copy from their warehouse recently.
Chances are good the supplier of your fortuitious connection has an unlimited pipe.
Chances are good that they weren't using it at the time(as attested by your connection speed)
But the reality is that you did take something from them that they cannot get back, regardless of the fact that it didn't cost them anything extra.
Unlike a water spigot, which is also paid for, you can connect without notice. This is the only ambiguous area. Furthermore, they are broadcasting on your property, and in a radio badn which is unregulated. In short, they didn't use adequate protection, they knowingly broadcast to you, and they would likely have no ability to prosecute you under current laws. Just because you happened to transmit packets that their network accepted and processed, and then responded to doesn't mean you did anything wrong.
However, the ethical question is vastly different. There is a level of "I didn't know this could happen" for the user, but that doesn't completely remove their responsability. On the other hand, you knew exactly what you were doing.
I think you have a responsability, however, to notify them. Just think of all the spam I could send out through their connection before they noticed from my car...
"No, really, this time we actually are being DDOSed!"
Said the IT guy at Aljazeera. 3 weeks ago he admitted to wanting a little free publicity when one of his co workers mentioned that they were surprised no one was trying any serious computer hacking on either side of the war. "Sometimes the copy cats just need a little kick."
</tongueincheek>
I'm sincerely sorry to see this happen. I hadn't realized they had an english arm, I've been going to the arabic site just to see the pictures I can't find anywhere else. I can't wait to see the articles! (No playboy jokes, ok?)
The first money hack...
The first money hack that gets prosecuted outside of the game
The first mafia/gang/organized crime ring entirely within the game
The first prosecuted money laundering scheme involving the game
The first lawsuit brought against the company
The first information hack (CC, Name, address, etc)
The first murder attempt inside the game (are they going to ban guns? What happens with kitchen knives?)
The first murder hack inside the game, after they dull kitchen knives
The first real life attempted or commited murder by an individual who only knew the victim through the game
The first hack that allows players to chat without the system monitoring communication (Hello, big brother), yet still be in the same environment and have the same level of anonymity
If you make a game that involves power (in this case, freedom from death and most societal repurcussions, and the ability to move real money) without accountability, then you cannot have something that resembles the 'real' world, because these things are inherent in the real world.
It'll take the failure of many of these games, plus much better graphics (3d) and audio before we find out how a virtual world that closely mimics our own will really work.
Just remember, it's your employer's job to make sure you are happy and have meaningful, challenging and fun projects. You are the customer, and they must do all within their power to satisfy you so you'll deign to come to work the next day.
Come off it. This is a job. It is only as lifeless and painful as you yourself make it. There is fun to be had in debugging someone else's work, if you decide to have fun with it, or even the most tedious/boring projects.
Please note that those employees who are happy are generally more productive, and get fired last.
If you're waiting for your employer to "make" you happy, it'll never happen, you jaded cynic.
If you feel you cannot be happy without them being proactive about it then you'd best look for a job elsewhere.
Ok, you can find a 5V to 12V DC to DC converter at MPJA but it only supports 1A of current.
You might give it a try, though, since the laptop in charging mode should consume less than one amp. I doubt you'll have any issues with putting 6v in instead of 5v, but buy a few (they're cheap) and find out.
Get a car adaptor (cigarette lighter type) that powers your laptop in a car and hook it up to the DC to DC converter. In a pinch, if you need more current, your friend can use two or more converters with.1 ohm resisters to supply more current (one resister on the output of each supply, then the output from the resisters can go together)
If your friend can build one, then he should not have too much problem finding a boost switching regulator that'll take 4-8 volts and output 12V at an amp or more from one of the suppliers listed above. In some cases the WebBench from national semiconductor will design it for you, and they will even sell you all the parts and a suitable PCB for under $20 for some converters.
Switching supplies are difficult to debug and are considered somewhat of a black art among EE types, which is why I was warning you away from it before.
There are probably 6v to 120vAC power inverters which should do the job just fine, and will be the easiest and fastest way to go. Just plug your power adaptor into it and then into the laptop and you're done.
I suspect they are rather expensive though.
The other alternative is to make an adaptor that goes directly from the battery to the powerbook. Since you didn't give any specs on the power requirements of the laptop you're talking about (and yes, the different powerbooks and ibooks have different power adaptors) then I can only give some general suggestions.
Unless you are an EE (or aspiring to be one) then don't get involved with switching regulator design and go with the option above. If you must, then go to National Semiconductor, Linear Technology or Maxim and look at their parametric guides to the power regulators. What you need is a switching boost regulator. If you are exceptionally lucky, you'll find just the part you need with the exact application note for input voltage, output voltage, and supply current. I doubt it though. Then you'll need to buy the parts and assemble it. Getting all those tiny surface mount parts on a bread board is only half the fun, though you can still get many parts in through hole.
Of course, neither of the above two methods result in a 'trickle' charge. It'll still suck power from your bike while charging, which leaves the last option:
Charging the battery directly. Just don't. If you don't know enough that you must ask slashdot (of all the places...? Why not sci.electronics.design or something? Egad...) Sorry, uh... Yeah, like I said, if you think the best place to find out is slashdot, then you don't know nearly enough to properly charge your battery directly without damaging it. Plus you still have the problems of building a step up switching regulator on top of the charger, since the battery will need a higher voltage than your 6v motorcycle cell.
However, I will give you a general overview: Battery charging is essentially a current (not voltage) operation. You force a certian amount of current in for a period of time, and the battery releases some as heat and stores the rest. Lithium Ion batteries are very finicky when it comes to charging. You will reduce your batteries capacity by 10% or more each time you charge it incorrectly. If a battery costs you $100, then it's worth doing it right, and in your case I think the only 'right' way is to use an inverter and the laptop's internal charger. Furthermore, Lithium Ion batteries do not like being trickle charged. When done properly it doesn't hurt them, but it doesn't give them a good full charge, either. Lastly, LiIon batteries are well known for their inability to take many charges. Early cells couldn't handle more than 500 charge cycles without losing most of their useful capacity. State of the art cells now don't go over 800. Trickle charging excacerbates this issue.
If you can get NiMH batteries for your laptop then I'd say you have a good chance, since you can go to your local hobby shop can get a charger from them, but they still take 12v so we're back to square one. If your LiIon is only 10.8v then you can get LiIon chargers from the model airplace community, but those are also usually 12v or 120vAC.
So, in closing, I'm still strongly advocating usage of a regular inverter with the laptop's own power brick.
Good luck on your trip!
-Adam
Yet another reason I loathe Apple (not the products, the company): they don't have power specifications on their website about the laptops. The have the input specs to the power brick, but not its output or the laptops input and current requirements, nevermind the battery V and I. I know they have to dumb things down for the average user, but at least put some real technical specs on the technical specs page instead of the fluff they currently have there.
This is incorrect. A DGPS transmitter knows its own location, and can therefore determine the error of each satellite in its view.
It then sends a DGPS stream out, and any GPS receiver capable of receiving that stream can remove the satellite error for satellites they share with the DGPS transmitter.
However, typical low end DGPS will only reduce the error (when SA is turned ON) to 10 meters or so. The receivers used by surveyers with DGPS can go to the centimeter level, longitudinally and latitudinally. Altitude is a different matter...
Garmin is using a system similar to DGPS called WAAS which also helps reduce the error.
The encoded GPS signal the military uses along with high end receivers will, IIRC, go down to the meter without any DGPS. The reason they can't get any better than to the meter is that the atmospheric effects on the signal can't easily be corrected for in real time.
A company called thinsoft has a product called BeTwin which does exactly what you're asking.
Hook up to four additional USB keyboards and mice, and a monitor for each station (obviously you'd need more video cards if you want more than two stations) and it treats them all as seperate computers.
I found out about it because MSI bundles a two station version with the geforce 4x00 cards. I haven't tried it, though.
Unsolicited Commercial Email is still Unsolicited if I didn't solicit the company to send it to me.
If someone who knows my email address gives it to a company without my knowledge or consent, it is still unsolicited business email.
This is called a referral in the business world. It is probably an attempt to get around spam legislation in certian states, since a referral is the beginning of a business relationship.
The problem now is that *any* business could claim that my address was 'referred' to them, and then say that to protection the privacy of their clients they won't tell me who or when I was referred.
Since we live in an 'innocent until proven guilty' country the burden would be on me to prove that no one referred me.
So existing spam legislation should be changed assumiong that referrals are valid business relationships:
If a third party provides a referral to a business to be contacted via email, with whom the business does not have a prior relationship, the business is allowed to send not more than 1 email to the target, and that email must contain the verified name and email address, and claimed relationship of the person that referred the target. In addition, no person shall refer more than 10 people in one day. The business must obtain and verify the referrer's full name, address and phone number, and keep these on file, providing them to law enforcement officers on warrant or subpeona. The target may also request this information, which must be provided within 3 business days without warrant.
If the referrer indeed has a pre-existing relationship with the target, then he can have no reason to keep his identity, address and phone numbers secret. Furthermore, personal referrals generally don't result in millions of email addresses at a time. 10 a day is a safe limit.
Sure, there are loopholes, but I believe that in a capitalist society referrals are a valid source of business, and while I'd rather hear about the business from a friend, who gets the reward when I tell the company who referred me, I can see valid situations where the friend has the business contact me. Just not many of them.
There isn't much of a difference between a friend selling my email address, and referring me with a bonus if I buy something. Since email addresses aren't considered property then we'd have a hard time pushing that as the case.
Actually, I work for at the corporate office of a small chain of video stores, so we get to see all the movies destined to go on video about 2-3 months before they go to video.
They're called screeners, since the studios are asking us to screen them and hopefully put them on our shelves.
Basic plot summary (not too spoilerish): Paul has a fremen concubine and a wife (who is from another house). Paul and the fremen woman are trying to have kids, but find that they can't, so they use an ancient fremen fertility treatment which not only helps pregnency, but speeds it up and give the child born special abilities due to the spice.
Paul becomes blind due to a terrorist attack on a city he is visiting. The ancient fremen way has blind people go out into the desert to die, which is rather respectful since they don't demand the body water they carry at death. His sister reigns while his child is growing up. A fremen prophet rises up against alia (pauls reigning sister), saying that arakis is and should be a desert planet, rather than the green earth-like planet pauls and now his sister's reign has made it. The worms are dying because of this.
Real story (Big spoilers): Pauls public wife is giving his fremen concubine contraceptives. The are discovered, and decide to use the fremen method to overcome their effects. She has twins, a boy and a girl, and dies in childirth. During this time those who were instruction pauls wife to give the contraceptive launch another plan to prevent the birth or kill the children.
They fail, but pauls wife dies due to the speed of the pregnancy and delivery. The children grow up under the care of pauls wife and sister (their aunt), as paul leaves for the desert due to his blindness. During the remainder of the movie paul lives as the prophet testifying against his own riegn and sister. Most of the other characters do not realize this, but suspect it so they don't have him assasinated as they would any other detractor.
The remainder covers the treachery of another house trying to disrupt the spice trade so they can gain additional power and control. This fails due in part to their own treachery, and in part to pauls mother. Sister alia becomes delusional and power hungry, and eventually kills herself. Pauls son becomes one with the worms, and thus endowed with power begins to bring down the house of paul atreides, bringing arrakis back to its desert self.
Since I have a super secret ability to see movies between the time they leave the theater and go to the video store, and since this movie about to go to TV was never in the theaters, I've already seen it.
First off, there are no real spoilers in this comment. Things like it's a 4.5 hour movie split into three 1.5 hour segments are fair game.
If you liked the first movie, you'll enjoy this one. This movie covers both the second and third books, of which I've heard bad things. If you like them just for entertainment then you'll do well. If you are a Dune fanatic, then whether you enjoy them or not depends on whether you enjoyed the books or not.
Technically they are well done. The effects are as well done as the first miniseries, and the acting is on par with the first. If anything lacks, I'd say it was due to the books they are following rather than any problems of the production. Since I haven't read the books I can't comment on how well they follow the plot, except to say that the summaries I've seen online match the movies.
All that said, I enjoyed spending a nice quiet evening with my wife watching it. It was a long evening (4.5 hours), but we were glued to the set, so we couldn't turn it off and continue it later. I'd hate to see it with commercials and with time in between. If you hate that to, then be aware that you video store will have it on its shelves on May 20th in DVD and VHS.
I've happily been using their win-pvr 250 on my winxp computer for nearly a year.
I would not characterize it as a solid piece of software, but restarting the app is all that's needed when it starts recording with no one logged in. It records fine if you leave it alone, but when you log in while it's recording it slows to 10-20 frames per second. This is an issue a few times a month, so not a big deal. I suspect it's related to winxp, since the software isn't a service and has to log in as the user.
The only other issue is that once in awhile the mpeg shows coding artifacts (small flipped chunks occasionally show up). This requires a reboot. I haven't spent the time figuring out how to duplicate it, as it only happens once a month or less.
Considering the bad experiences I've had with the ATI all in wonder cards, this is a dream. All my shows are recorded, and I can take them with my on my laptop or save them to my server for later consumption.
Slashdot Mirror
I think in the case of Osama and Microsoft it's simply a mutual respect for succesful criminals.
-Adam
We can't have a free, stable, mature, secure, cryptographic operating system around because
Terrorists can't afford windows, and those that can are easy to hack into
But if we gave them a free system that can't be hacked into, then we're in deep doo-doo.
What this really means is that we are admitting that a criminal could use a tool more effectively than 'the good guys', so we should prevent anyone from having a good tool.
But, while the funding is a boost, its loss certianly isn't a show stopper, or even a show slower.
-Adam
Bittorrent file for the ISO coming out of australia, but I'm in the US and I'll leave mine open for the next several hours. You do that too, ok?
-Adam
Hacking is an addiction. Furthermore, a succesfull cracker does not necessarily make a good security expert. You wouldn't give a 5 time convicted drunk driver their license, even if they haven't touched alcohol for years... Why? Because it can be too easy, too much of a temptation to fall back into old habits.
Maybe you've never felt a true addiction. Perhaps you don't know what it's like to be mentally chained to some action, item, etc. Sure, you get into long programming binges, where you're in 'the zone' for hours, but it's not like you can't go 2 minutes without zoning out of real life and thinking about your program.
When you are addicted to something you very literally are unable to keep your mind off the subject for any length of time.
The chances of an addicted, convicted, and reformed cracker of being tempted and going back to their old ways are so much greater than the chances of a programmer/net admin/whatever who hasn't been addicted that it isn't a reasonable risk to take. You don't give a reformed alcoholic a wine tasting job.
That being said, it's unfair to group people together by any metric. I could say, for instance, that all good criminals are persistant con men. It isn't always true all the time, but when you look at one case at a time it certianly seems so. Most, if not all, of Mitnick's significant exploits weren't brain power, or shear ability to break systems. It was his ability to convince another person that he was authorized to recieve sensitive information, and when he didn't get it from one person he moved on to the next. A very charismatic, persistent con man. Certianly no Carmack.
So it's not fair to lock everyone convicted of computer crimes from using computers again, or even from using computers in the way they used them in their illegal activities.
But if you are shortsighted enough to believe that a true addicted can ever be fully and completely cured... Employer beware...
-Adam
- 15 wireless microphones
- Base units
- Record each signal on it's own 'track'
- Up to two hour recording period
- Record results to CD
From your further discussion, I'm assuming the following:- Small microphone transmitters, user wearable, light
- Mobile users
- Small working area (wireless mics, 802.11 don't go very far)
- Medium or lower sound quality (good for voice, but not much else or you wouldn't suggest voip)
And this is enough information to suggest exactly what you suggested. If you told us better parameters, such as distance, typical usage (theatre, I'm assuming), obstacles between wireless microphones and recording system, etc.I wouldn't suggest you do anything with voip right now unless you want to roll your own. It's more expensive, and at this point less mature and dependable than a basic wireless mic system. Unless you like babysitting the recording system...
So go with regular wireless mics. Be aware of contention and crosstalk. You can get wireless mic receivers that will support more than one mic simultaneously, and they are typically rack mountable. Put four 4 channel receivers in a small rack mount box with a rack mount computer. Now look for a multichannel recording card. You could go with 8 individual sound cards, but finding a mobo to support them would be a fun trick) The multichannel card should come with basic multitrack software. Perhaps a programs such as audacity will work with them. Beyond that you should be able to recording the resulting wav files to CD.
I wouldn't bother with having a bunch of little minidiscs of other individual recorders. To many little points of failure.
You might be interested in a few other options. You can get full duplex radios such as those used in cordless telephones from laipac.com. I'm currently using a cordless telephone for bike rides and other short distance communications. Last winter I mulled the idea over in my head of making a voip phone with 16 bit 802.11b cards (compactflash or pcmcia). It would take a relatively low power microcontroller to encode the communications. Since 802.11b doesn't have any real-time capabilites or QOS service, you won't get even packet rates. But since you didn't mention that the sound was going to listened to as it was created, and the computer can buffer just fine, you only need to time stamp each packet and the computer can still do a full recording with only a little buffer at the transmission side.
-Adam
"In the still of the night, I accepted another dupe. Oh how I love, love to post, promise you'll never post the most, in the still of the night. Shoo dupe dupe du dupe, shoo dupe dupe de waah!"
-Adam
Why is software different
Because it's bits and bytes, and can be replicated infinitely. So a programmer makes a program in 40 hours, and it's taxed forever, even if the programmer isn't continuing to work on it.
and how would this change...if we did tax software imports?
It would legitimize software as a 'thing', which has the same copyright, property, IP, patent, etc protections as things that exist physically and can't be duplicated for free.
If software is ever to be free, programmers need to be free. For programmers to be free, we must invent real jobs that pay well that a real programmer can do for only a few hours a day. Then it won't matter if your job is shipped out, since your job simply won't exist anymore.
Oh, wait, software will never be free. Sorry, guess you're screwed...
-Adam
For those who want a screen filling larger image, 1651x1651, it is the subject of today's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD).
-Adam
Electric dreams is about an architect who tries to organize his life with a computer. His computer becomes sentient (due to an overdose of information from the company mainframe and subsequent dousing with wine) and they both fall in love with the woman (a cellist in the local symphony) upstairs.
It's got some laughs, lots of old computers, and rather decent 80's music.
It's hard to find now, but since I work for a video chain I was able to get one old copy from their warehouse recently.
-Adam
There are a few things to consider:
Chances are good the supplier of your fortuitious connection has an unlimited pipe.
Chances are good that they weren't using it at the time(as attested by your connection speed)
But the reality is that you did take something from them that they cannot get back, regardless of the fact that it didn't cost them anything extra.
Unlike a water spigot, which is also paid for, you can connect without notice. This is the only ambiguous area. Furthermore, they are broadcasting on your property, and in a radio badn which is unregulated. In short, they didn't use adequate protection, they knowingly broadcast to you, and they would likely have no ability to prosecute you under current laws. Just because you happened to transmit packets that their network accepted and processed, and then responded to doesn't mean you did anything wrong.
However, the ethical question is vastly different. There is a level of "I didn't know this could happen" for the user, but that doesn't completely remove their responsability. On the other hand, you knew exactly what you were doing.
I think you have a responsability, however, to notify them. Just think of all the spam I could send out through their connection before they noticed from my car...
-Adam
Four weeks later...
"No, really, this time we actually are being DDOSed!"
Said the IT guy at Aljazeera. 3 weeks ago he admitted to wanting a little free publicity when one of his co workers mentioned that they were surprised no one was trying any serious computer hacking on either side of the war. "Sometimes the copy cats just need a little kick."
</tongueincheek>
I'm sincerely sorry to see this happen. I hadn't realized they had an english arm, I've been going to the arabic site just to see the pictures I can't find anywhere else. I can't wait to see the articles! (No playboy jokes, ok?)
-Adam
How long until...
The first money hack...
The first money hack that gets prosecuted outside of the game
The first mafia/gang/organized crime ring entirely within the game
The first prosecuted money laundering scheme involving the game
The first lawsuit brought against the company
The first information hack (CC, Name, address, etc)
The first murder attempt inside the game (are they going to ban guns? What happens with kitchen knives?)
The first murder hack inside the game, after they dull kitchen knives
The first real life attempted or commited murder by an individual who only knew the victim through the game
The first hack that allows players to chat without the system monitoring communication (Hello, big brother), yet still be in the same environment and have the same level of anonymity
If you make a game that involves power (in this case, freedom from death and most societal repurcussions, and the ability to move real money) without accountability, then you cannot have something that resembles the 'real' world, because these things are inherent in the real world.
It'll take the failure of many of these games, plus much better graphics (3d) and audio before we find out how a virtual world that closely mimics our own will really work.
-Adam
Just remember, it's your employer's job to make sure you are happy and have meaningful, challenging and fun projects. You are the customer, and they must do all within their power to satisfy you so you'll deign to come to work the next day.
Come off it. This is a job. It is only as lifeless and painful as you yourself make it. There is fun to be had in debugging someone else's work, if you decide to have fun with it, or even the most tedious/boring projects.
Please note that those employees who are happy are generally more productive, and get fired last.
If you're waiting for your employer to "make" you happy, it'll never happen, you jaded cynic.
If you feel you cannot be happy without them being proactive about it then you'd best look for a job elsewhere.
Believe me, they'll say "Good riddance."
-Adam
Microsoft.
We get rid of hackers by making it so that you only
need to be a script kiddie to break into our systems.
-Adam
Ok, you can find a 5V to 12V DC to DC converter at MPJA but it only supports 1A of current.
.1 ohm resisters to supply more current (one resister on the output of each supply, then the output from the resisters can go together)
You might give it a try, though, since the laptop in charging mode should consume less than one amp. I doubt you'll have any issues with putting 6v in instead of 5v, but buy a few (they're cheap) and find out.
Get a car adaptor (cigarette lighter type) that powers your laptop in a car and hook it up to the DC to DC converter. In a pinch, if you need more current, your friend can use two or more converters with
If your friend can build one, then he should not have too much problem finding a boost switching regulator that'll take 4-8 volts and output 12V at an amp or more from one of the suppliers listed above. In some cases the WebBench from national semiconductor will design it for you, and they will even sell you all the parts and a suitable PCB for under $20 for some converters.
Switching supplies are difficult to debug and are considered somewhat of a black art among EE types, which is why I was warning you away from it before.
Good luck! -Adam
There are probably 6v to 120vAC power inverters which should do the job just fine, and will be the easiest and fastest way to go. Just plug your power adaptor into it and then into the laptop and you're done.
I suspect they are rather expensive though.
The other alternative is to make an adaptor that goes directly from the battery to the powerbook. Since you didn't give any specs on the power requirements of the laptop you're talking about (and yes, the different powerbooks and ibooks have different power adaptors) then I can only give some general suggestions.
Unless you are an EE (or aspiring to be one) then don't get involved with switching regulator design and go with the option above. If you must, then go to National Semiconductor, Linear Technology or Maxim and look at their parametric guides to the power regulators. What you need is a switching boost regulator. If you are exceptionally lucky, you'll find just the part you need with the exact application note for input voltage, output voltage, and supply current. I doubt it though. Then you'll need to buy the parts and assemble it. Getting all those tiny surface mount parts on a bread board is only half the fun, though you can still get many parts in through hole.
Of course, neither of the above two methods result in a 'trickle' charge. It'll still suck power from your bike while charging, which leaves the last option:
Charging the battery directly. Just don't. If you don't know enough that you must ask slashdot (of all the places...? Why not sci.electronics.design or something? Egad...) Sorry, uh... Yeah, like I said, if you think the best place to find out is slashdot, then you don't know nearly enough to properly charge your battery directly without damaging it. Plus you still have the problems of building a step up switching regulator on top of the charger, since the battery will need a higher voltage than your 6v motorcycle cell.
However, I will give you a general overview: Battery charging is essentially a current (not voltage) operation. You force a certian amount of current in for a period of time, and the battery releases some as heat and stores the rest. Lithium Ion batteries are very finicky when it comes to charging. You will reduce your batteries capacity by 10% or more each time you charge it incorrectly. If a battery costs you $100, then it's worth doing it right, and in your case I think the only 'right' way is to use an inverter and the laptop's internal charger. Furthermore, Lithium Ion batteries do not like being trickle charged. When done properly it doesn't hurt them, but it doesn't give them a good full charge, either. Lastly, LiIon batteries are well known for their inability to take many charges. Early cells couldn't handle more than 500 charge cycles without losing most of their useful capacity. State of the art cells now don't go over 800. Trickle charging excacerbates this issue.
If you can get NiMH batteries for your laptop then I'd say you have a good chance, since you can go to your local hobby shop can get a charger from them, but they still take 12v so we're back to square one. If your LiIon is only 10.8v then you can get LiIon chargers from the model airplace community, but those are also usually 12v or 120vAC.
So, in closing, I'm still strongly advocating usage of a regular inverter with the laptop's own power brick.
Good luck on your trip!
-Adam
Yet another reason I loathe Apple (not the products, the company): they don't have power specifications on their website about the laptops. The have the input specs to the power brick, but not its output or the laptops input and current requirements, nevermind the battery V and I. I know they have to dumb things down for the average user, but at least put some real technical specs on the technical specs page instead of the fluff they currently have there.
Was that like the pregame show?
Yeah, it was. Just wait for halftime, though, it'll be a blast!
-Adam
Hugging my kids a little tighter and longer since 19 March.
This is incorrect. A DGPS transmitter knows its own location, and can therefore determine the error of each satellite in its view.
It then sends a DGPS stream out, and any GPS receiver capable of receiving that stream can remove the satellite error for satellites they share with the DGPS transmitter.
However, typical low end DGPS will only reduce the error (when SA is turned ON) to 10 meters or so. The receivers used by surveyers with DGPS can go to the centimeter level, longitudinally and latitudinally. Altitude is a different matter...
Garmin is using a system similar to DGPS called WAAS which also helps reduce the error.
The encoded GPS signal the military uses along with high end receivers will, IIRC, go down to the meter without any DGPS. The reason they can't get any better than to the meter is that the atmospheric effects on the signal can't easily be corrected for in real time.
A decent tutorial can be found here
-Adam
A company called thinsoft has a product called BeTwin which does exactly what you're asking.
Hook up to four additional USB keyboards and mice, and a monitor for each station (obviously you'd need more video cards if you want more than two stations) and it treats them all as seperate computers.
I found out about it because MSI bundles a two station version with the geforce 4x00 cards. I haven't tried it, though.
It works for windows.
-Adam
Unsolicited Commercial Email is still Unsolicited if I didn't solicit the company to send it to me .
If someone who knows my email address gives it to a company without my knowledge or consent, it is still unsolicited business email.
This is called a referral in the business world. It is probably an attempt to get around spam legislation in certian states, since a referral is the beginning of a business relationship.
The problem now is that *any* business could claim that my address was 'referred' to them, and then say that to protection the privacy of their clients they won't tell me who or when I was referred.
Since we live in an 'innocent until proven guilty' country the burden would be on me to prove that no one referred me.
So existing spam legislation should be changed assumiong that referrals are valid business relationships:
If a third party provides a referral to a business to be contacted via email, with whom the business does not have a prior relationship, the business is allowed to send not more than 1 email to the target, and that email must contain the verified name and email address, and claimed relationship of the person that referred the target. In addition, no person shall refer more than 10 people in one day. The business must obtain and verify the referrer's full name, address and phone number, and keep these on file, providing them to law enforcement officers on warrant or subpeona. The target may also request this information, which must be provided within 3 business days without warrant.
If the referrer indeed has a pre-existing relationship with the target, then he can have no reason to keep his identity, address and phone numbers secret. Furthermore, personal referrals generally don't result in millions of email addresses at a time. 10 a day is a safe limit.
Sure, there are loopholes, but I believe that in a capitalist society referrals are a valid source of business, and while I'd rather hear about the business from a friend, who gets the reward when I tell the company who referred me, I can see valid situations where the friend has the business contact me. Just not many of them.
There isn't much of a difference between a friend selling my email address, and referring me with a bonus if I buy something. Since email addresses aren't considered property then we'd have a hard time pushing that as the case.
-Adam
Actually, I work for at the corporate office of a small chain of video stores, so we get to see all the movies destined to go on video about 2-3 months before they go to video.
They're called screeners, since the studios are asking us to screen them and hopefully put them on our shelves.
-Adam
Basic plot summary (not too spoilerish): Paul has a fremen concubine and a wife (who is from another house). Paul and the fremen woman are trying to have kids, but find that they can't, so they use an ancient fremen fertility treatment which not only helps pregnency, but speeds it up and give the child born special abilities due to the spice.
Paul becomes blind due to a terrorist attack on a city he is visiting. The ancient fremen way has blind people go out into the desert to die, which is rather respectful since they don't demand the body water they carry at death. His sister reigns while his child is growing up. A fremen prophet rises up against alia (pauls reigning sister), saying that arakis is and should be a desert planet, rather than the green earth-like planet pauls and now his sister's reign has made it. The worms are dying because of this.
Real story (Big spoilers): Pauls public wife is giving his fremen concubine contraceptives. The are discovered, and decide to use the fremen method to overcome their effects. She has twins, a boy and a girl, and dies in childirth. During this time those who were instruction pauls wife to give the contraceptive launch another plan to prevent the birth or kill the children. They fail, but pauls wife dies due to the speed of the pregnancy and delivery. The children grow up under the care of pauls wife and sister (their aunt), as paul leaves for the desert due to his blindness. During the remainder of the movie paul lives as the prophet testifying against his own riegn and sister. Most of the other characters do not realize this, but suspect it so they don't have him assasinated as they would any other detractor.
The remainder covers the treachery of another house trying to disrupt the spice trade so they can gain additional power and control. This fails due in part to their own treachery, and in part to pauls mother. Sister alia becomes delusional and power hungry, and eventually kills herself. Pauls son becomes one with the worms, and thus endowed with power begins to bring down the house of paul atreides, bringing arrakis back to its desert self.
There's more, but I gotta go.
-Adam
Since I have a super secret ability to see movies between the time they leave the theater and go to the video store, and since this movie about to go to TV was never in the theaters, I've already seen it.
First off, there are no real spoilers in this comment. Things like it's a 4.5 hour movie split into three 1.5 hour segments are fair game.
If you liked the first movie, you'll enjoy this one. This movie covers both the second and third books, of which I've heard bad things. If you like them just for entertainment then you'll do well. If you are a Dune fanatic, then whether you enjoy them or not depends on whether you enjoyed the books or not.
Technically they are well done. The effects are as well done as the first miniseries, and the acting is on par with the first. If anything lacks, I'd say it was due to the books they are following rather than any problems of the production. Since I haven't read the books I can't comment on how well they follow the plot, except to say that the summaries I've seen online match the movies.
All that said, I enjoyed spending a nice quiet evening with my wife watching it. It was a long evening (4.5 hours), but we were glued to the set, so we couldn't turn it off and continue it later. I'd hate to see it with commercials and with time in between. If you hate that to, then be aware that you video store will have it on its shelves on May 20th in DVD and VHS.
I'll reply to this post with a movie summary.
-Adam
I've happily been using their win-pvr 250 on my winxp computer for nearly a year.
I would not characterize it as a solid piece of software, but restarting the app is all that's needed when it starts recording with no one logged in. It records fine if you leave it alone, but when you log in while it's recording it slows to 10-20 frames per second. This is an issue a few times a month, so not a big deal. I suspect it's related to winxp, since the software isn't a service and has to log in as the user.
The only other issue is that once in awhile the mpeg shows coding artifacts (small flipped chunks occasionally show up). This requires a reboot. I haven't spent the time figuring out how to duplicate it, as it only happens once a month or less.
Considering the bad experiences I've had with the ATI all in wonder cards, this is a dream. All my shows are recorded, and I can take them with my on my laptop or save them to my server for later consumption.
YMMV.
-Adam