Of course, when it's something Slashdot depends on, they not only wait for the official announcement, they wait until they've downloaded it before printing it!
:-D
-Adam
Re:Ethics in Journalism?
on
KDE 3.0 is Out
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Slashdot is a journal, and as such wants 'the scoop'. When they get 'the scoop' they post it. While it may not be nice, there are dozens of things the ftp manager can do to limit their problems. First (and most important) is to NOT RELEASE IT if it's not released. They can do this by disabling anonymous access to that directory, while enabling mirrors to log in and get access (either using IP, or ssh ftp with usernames and passwords, etc). This is something they will have to implement for following releases. It's plain common sense to give official mirrors front row seating and advance notice. Independantly run mirrors can wait like everyone else.
No one would be complaining if some other tidbit of software was available but not announced at some other FTP site.
The sooner people start treating slashdot like the Enquirer, the fewer people will complian. This site is not much more than mental candy for nerds, and provides very little real value to its users. But it is fun, interesting, and often entertaining.
If he cannot build a watertight battery compartment, what chance in heck does he have of building a generator?
It is true that a battery subject to adverse conditions will leak, but that goes again toward engineering a good battery compartment, and buying good batteries that are suited to low drain applications.
I still say that it'd be far better than any generator scheme he could come up with. There are reasons he might not want to use batteries, but the ones you mention are cop-outs to cover incapable engineers.
You are giving us very little information. But here's what I'll do for you: I'll answer your problem and make it quick, easy, and (most important) CHEAP.
Use a D cell. Yep, your common flashlight battery will supply you with 3.8 years of power at your requirements, and best of all no moving parts!!! If your device lasts half that long underwater then I'll officially be surprised. Need longer time? Use two cells! More power? Go lithium!
Of course, there could be legitimate reasons to not use the cheap, widely available chemical power you can buy at your grocery store (maybe your gov't grant requires you to buy $400 hammers as well or something), but if you posted info relevant to the question, and why painfully obvious solutions have been thrown out then we could get somewhere.
If these are home built one-off projects, I'd definitely ditch the generator concept. It's far too problematic, and will not last anywhere as long as a lantern battery, and probably not as long as the D cell quoted above. If these are research devices, I'd ditch it unless it was actually the whole point of the research (which I suspect). If this is part of your report/dissertation/homework/etc then do your own work. If this is a commercial product, tell us your market, price range, longevity, and what it's actually powering.
You need to decide. If you let 'slashdot' decide for you, you'll never be your own person.
Personally I'm a truthful person: I value integrity, and I try to behave accordingly. Were I in your shoes I would tend towards bringing up the subject if it isn't brought up during the course of the interview. But it would also depend on the position. If all it was was general IT stuff (admin, user support, transient jobs, etc) then I may not bring it up, though if they did I'd certianly be straightforward with them.
If it was long term employment (ie, long development cycles, large projects, long learning curves, etc) then I wouldn't want the position - it wouldn't be beneficial to either me or my employer.
I think the bottom line is you need to evaluate what kind of employee/employer relationship you want to have, and seek out a position which will be beneficial to both of you.
Actually, if you believe in free software you should include it. 5 years from now the publisher may go bankrupt, you may be unavailable and the book may be useless without the code, which will be abandonware...
Secondly, I have a broadband connection, but I find I reach for the CD first because it's right there and it's easier/faster/etc.
Lastly, I have a book which doesn't include the source code on an media, but does include it online - the problem is that it doesn't include COMMENTS! The code printed in the book does have comments, so I can only assume they are trying to make the online code useful only to those that have the book - the reality being that it's almost less useful.
It adds a buck. It is useful for 10% of those who buy it, and it is a marketting gimmick. There really isn't a reason to not go with it.
But PLEASE include the text of the book on CD if you can manage it! PLEASE?!??!
To clarify that facsimile transmissions, electronic mail, and other similar methods
of delivery are direct mail for purposes of the direct mail exemption;
is one of the major changes that this rule will make. I do not know what the rules are for Direct Mail, but you can bet it would allow spammers some legal lattitude that they currently do not have... Email should not be classified as DIRECT MAIL in this ruling - it's almost tacked on. They should make a completely seperate ruling for email, preferably clarifying that it is unlike mail and facsimile in major ways...
No, the laws about telemarketing do NOT apply. You are signing up for an email service. Have you read their service agreement lately? If you never signed up for mail then normal telemarketing laws/regulations would apply, but since you signed up for their service you agreed to whatever they got you to agree to - including being able to change their service agreement and privacy policy without notice and at will.
Oh - I forgot - you don't spend time reading those, do you?
The entertainment industry was built around the fact that it cost money to distribute the entertainment. As distribution channels changed (and became cheaper) the industry adapted in more and more profitable ways. The internet gives us an opportunity to shortcut that (again), and cut out the middleman. The industry, obviously, is searching for ways to adapt and become even more profitable - now they can get the customer to pay for the content, and distribution. Their charges are now all profit.
The problem is that the creaters of content are so intertwined with the distributers that it'll be a long time before we see creators uncoupled from the providers. In the meantime you find that providers will only support creators that do it their way, ie, exclusively through proper channels. They also act as the middlemen between the advertisers and the creators in the case of 'free' content such as TV.
We won't see independant creaters even near the quality of current movies/music/shows/series until we show creaters that it is worth their time. The model that premium cable channels have (no ads, full unlimited access) needs to be adopted. But - guess what - no one will pay for that model. Not yet, anyway...
Of course your 7.2k scsi drives run well - first of all you don't put them in cheap, poorly designed cases. Secondly they are not inexpensive, and much of that extra money goes toward making them last longer - one way to make something last longer is to lower its heat buildup.
Cheap drives cut corners on motors, bearings, and well-engineered cases. So cool fast drives cost more money than cool slow drives or hot fast drives.
7200 RPM drives run hotter than previous drives, and they must be cooled. Previously people rarely gave a thought to drive cooling, and if they don't take it into account now they will see large failure rates. If your drive is too hot to touch after running for an hour, then you need to cool it off.
I've been installing 7200 rpm IDE drives into servers and workstations for well over a year now, and the only complete failure I've had was one that didn't work from the start. I've had drive errors crop up from heat (put a fan in, seperate it from other equipment (don't sandwich it between the floppy and zip), etc) and from using a 40-wire IDE cable instead of the ata-100 80-wire cables.
FWIW, I've used Fujitsu until a few months ago, IBM, Maxtor, and few seagates. They have all been at the lower end of the price range ($99 wholesale - went from 10G to 20G and currently using 40G).
Anyone building their own system should pay attention to heat problems. I'll bet that you won't see these drives failing in systems built by Dell and others, they have engineers to deal with airflow and heat removal. If you put a fast drive in a case meant for a piddly 5400rpm drive, then you're begging for trouble. All the systems I build and sell with 7200 or greater RPM drives have fans blowing air on and around the drives. Any fast drive is going to fail without direct heat sinking and airflow.
This is a lesson learned from installing a dozen fast track raid cards into servers, with the second drive (and often both) being 7200RPM drives. We had all sorts of failures until we looked at the case airflow.
Obviously, however, the IBM drives are failing at a higher rate than other manufacturers. The reason is probably due to slightly smaller tolerances given for heat problems. The other big problem is selling their drives to the inexperienced consumers - one of the reasons you can find certian drives only in prebuilt systems. The manufacturer knows to sell only to people who know what their doing.
With the hard drive being the slowest component in the system (the bottle neck) people want to get the faster drive, but they fail to think of it in terms of heat production. As much time needs to be spent dealing the the hard drive's heat sinking as with the processor's heat sinking.
There are many other costs associated with running a business - taking care of the employee might be one of the easiest. Also given that this is a government project, there is more red tape to deal with. The thing is, it's possible to do it now at this price, think how much more easily it'll be accomplished with off-the-shelf hardware 3 years from now. Only, they can't wait that long to start...
Select the JukeBox playback mode beforehand, because you can only select songs here (no lists, or albums), and max. 16 songs can be pre-programmed. All you have to tell your guests is to turn the driving knob to search, press it to select and add to the program. This is something even girls can remember, or if not, boys will surly be happy to help
Sorry, couldn't help sharing this 'tip' from their website. Could be a cultural thing - I'm interested to see if the tips have such useful information in the other language on their site.
We want to give a $50,000,000 dollar contract to a company that can provide 500,000 rugged, easy to use, long lasting (14 hours of active use per charge minimum), PDAs with GPS and wireless communications.
That should be relatively simple, if they use a free OS. They don't need to be color, though it might help. They do need to be very easily visible. The display can be a larger 1/4 vga screen, which should be much less expensive to make than the current color PDA screens.
So, let's see... About twice as thick as an IPAQ, and about as wide and long as the old newtons. It wouldn't need to be a real computer, so you could go with only flash to hold the (optional) OS and program code with a compactflash slot for long term storage. The GPS unit will cost $10-15 in quantity, as will the GSM (or APRS, or 802.11b;-). The LCD, touchscreen and battery will cost $30-40 together, and the processor, mainboard, and all associated electronics will be another $10-20. The enclosure will be maybe $5. Cheap labor would be $1-5.
Cost each unit:$56 - 80. The R&D (as well as breathing room for unexpected problems) would soak up the last $44-20.
This could be done in two years, including the development of software that is easily configurable to make census forms and input, enable the communications across the network, etc.
At the high end, it would leave $10,000,000 for the company doing the development, equivilant to 40 salaried employees for five years at $50,000/yr (yes, some would be more, a few would be less, but the dev time should be less than 3 years, and fewer than 40 employees are needed.) If the company doing the work generalizes the PDA enough(maybe adding local networking to the national networking, etc) then they could sell additional units to other customers. Hobbyists would pay a little for it, but it would mostly stay in the corporate sector.
That's my bid. I estimate about one year to get the company up and running, one year R&D, two years active development, one year for a limited test run, one year for a production run and distribution, and two years breathing room. The software will allow full remote updating, real time statistics collection, we'll engineer the systems needed to run the entire show, and contract the necessary infrastructure for the wireless data collection.
If the EULA you read for the software that installed NEW.NET didn't force you to waive liability from new.net, and new.net didn't give you a EULA that waived their liability, then you could claim they are liable for the destruction of data and software on your PC, since you never waived such liability.
Ah, but to enact a judiciary means that they will have to actually persecute actions contrary to their rules and regulations using due process, maybe even a jury of the defendant's peers. Right now, without a judiciary, they can simply decide whether the defendant is doing bad and do whatever they like (within their power - revoke a domain, etc)
What I was saying is that it's a lot easier (path of least resistance) to run a club than a government. We must treat it as a governement if we expect change, even if it is missing key features of what we would consider a true gov't.
The true test will come when they try to take over other territory, such as W3C. They won't have a 'typical' military, and no one will call it a 'war', but it will essentially be combat (political) for cyberspace rights.
So, what we're seeing here is the same process that goes into forming a gov't. The people want representation, but the gov't claims they don't want huge processes, so they may allow other gov'ts to suggest (or maybe appoint) members of the board, but then you'll have the same problem of a country of states - some gov'ts represent a larger portion of the internet population, so we should get more representatives, but other smaller countries would be equally drowned out, so we set it up like the US republic?
No, this is going to be another "Good old boy" club, where all the board memebers do things for each other and for their own prestige and power. They nominate others who will help them in their own work, and shun anyone that doesn't comply.
They claim no responsability to anyone, least of all their users, so they will actually become targets of corporate lobbies and 'gifts'.
So, let's look back on history, and see if we can find examples of how such organizations and governements were effectively changed by their citizens.
Move along, nothing to see here, politics as usual.
Chances are you have a few options. University of Michigan, for instance, has free lawyers for their students who could at least tell you where you stand legally and what your options might be. You likely have other processes you can go through - you are paying for the dorm room with includes the service, bring it up with the administration of the dorms. Take it to a higher level, and show in what ways this has damaged your ability to do schoolwork. We also have a student government we pay dues to. They represent us to some extent to the administration, and you could talk to your student body representative. It'll give you experience for when you find out that you can't play your newest dvds on your home player since the MPAA turned it off and you need to talk to your senator or house rep to get them to overturn the new "Your content are belong to MPAA" amendment.
But reality is that they control the network, and they likely don't report to anyone that you can influence.
Asking for legal opinion on slashdot is pretty short sighted though. Sounds like you just wanted a public place to vent.
They don't need to test new weapons, they just need to get a copy of Worms Armageddon or Worms World Party and study the Gopher weapon. He burrows, then *BOOM!*, all gone, go bye-bye.
-Adam
Go find a shop that specializes in boat computers.
on
Marine-proofing a Computer
·
· Score: 3, Informative
You need to either 1) find a computer that was meant for use on a boat, or 2) find an enclosure and peripherals which is meant to house a computer on a boat.
Normal computers are not hardened enough for that environment, nor do they take well to non-ventilated boxes. You can (if you want) look at computers meant for industrial and food service use. Food factories have to be able to wash down every surface that is open to the processing area, and industrial computers can take that abuse and often more. It'll probably be cheaper to get a computer from a company that makes one specifically for boats.
If you insist on doing it without specialized components, well, good luck. Salt air will eat through computer parts like you wouldn't believe.
-Adam
The sea, she is a hungry creature, no?
It'd be nice to know the application...
on
Digitizing VGA?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The reason you find very few options for doing this is because there is almost always a better, cheaper, faster way of grabbing a screen without actually reading and interpretting the output.
A better Ask Slashdot tells us what you're trying to accomplish, and why you've dismissed the 'obvious' solutions (such as software, or a card inside the computer, etc).
The only reason I can see where you'd have to do it this way is if you don't have full access to the computer (can't load software, can't open case, trying to circumvent digital copyright protection, etc), but you still want to see what's on the screen.
I've been thinking about this for awhile mainly because I have to monitor hundreds of computers remotely. In some cases I need to control them before the system completes the boot-up process (ie, before software can be loaded), and in other cases I'm using operating systems for which inexpensive software is not available even after boot up. The solution I'm leaning toward is custom hardware (everything runs at 640x480 or less) which compresses and sends the signal over modem or tcp/ip. I haven't implemented it yet, but I enjoy thinking about it. Capturing higher resolution pictures is more involved.
Speaking of which, what do you need to do, exaclty? Do you just want to capture screen shots, or are you interested in spying on the stream in real (or near real) time? Do you need to capture those streams? How much color depth do you need? What's your budget? Does it need to be user friendly, or geek friendly?
Slashdot Mirror
I could become a teacher in a year....
-Adam
Of course, when it's something Slashdot depends on, they not only wait for the official announcement, they wait until they've downloaded it before printing it!
:-D
-Adam
Slashdot is a journal, and as such wants 'the scoop'. When they get 'the scoop' they post it. While it may not be nice, there are dozens of things the ftp manager can do to limit their problems. First (and most important) is to NOT RELEASE IT if it's not released. They can do this by disabling anonymous access to that directory, while enabling mirrors to log in and get access (either using IP, or ssh ftp with usernames and passwords, etc). This is something they will have to implement for following releases. It's plain common sense to give official mirrors front row seating and advance notice. Independantly run mirrors can wait like everyone else.
No one would be complaining if some other tidbit of software was available but not announced at some other FTP site.
The sooner people start treating slashdot like the Enquirer, the fewer people will complian. This site is not much more than mental candy for nerds, and provides very little real value to its users. But it is fun, interesting, and often entertaining.
-Adam
If he cannot build a watertight battery compartment, what chance in heck does he have of building a generator?
It is true that a battery subject to adverse conditions will leak, but that goes again toward engineering a good battery compartment, and buying good batteries that are suited to low drain applications.
I still say that it'd be far better than any generator scheme he could come up with. There are reasons he might not want to use batteries, but the ones you mention are cop-outs to cover incapable engineers.
-Adam
You are giving us very little information. But here's what I'll do for you: I'll answer your problem and make it quick, easy, and (most important) CHEAP.
Use a D cell. Yep, your common flashlight battery will supply you with 3.8 years of power at your requirements, and best of all no moving parts!!! If your device lasts half that long underwater then I'll officially be surprised. Need longer time? Use two cells! More power? Go lithium!
Of course, there could be legitimate reasons to not use the cheap, widely available chemical power you can buy at your grocery store (maybe your gov't grant requires you to buy $400 hammers as well or something), but if you posted info relevant to the question, and why painfully obvious solutions have been thrown out then we could get somewhere.
If these are home built one-off projects, I'd definitely ditch the generator concept. It's far too problematic, and will not last anywhere as long as a lantern battery, and probably not as long as the D cell quoted above. If these are research devices, I'd ditch it unless it was actually the whole point of the research (which I suspect). If this is part of your report/dissertation/homework/etc then do your own work. If this is a commercial product, tell us your market, price range, longevity, and what it's actually powering.
-Adam
You need to decide. If you let 'slashdot' decide for you, you'll never be your own person.
Personally I'm a truthful person: I value integrity, and I try to behave accordingly. Were I in your shoes I would tend towards bringing up the subject if it isn't brought up during the course of the interview. But it would also depend on the position. If all it was was general IT stuff (admin, user support, transient jobs, etc) then I may not bring it up, though if they did I'd certianly be straightforward with them.
If it was long term employment (ie, long development cycles, large projects, long learning curves, etc) then I wouldn't want the position - it wouldn't be beneficial to either me or my employer.
I think the bottom line is you need to evaluate what kind of employee/employer relationship you want to have, and seek out a position which will be beneficial to both of you.
-Adam
Actually, if you believe in free software you should include it. 5 years from now the publisher may go bankrupt, you may be unavailable and the book may be useless without the code, which will be abandonware...
Secondly, I have a broadband connection, but I find I reach for the CD first because it's right there and it's easier/faster/etc.
Lastly, I have a book which doesn't include the source code on an media, but does include it online - the problem is that it doesn't include COMMENTS! The code printed in the book does have comments, so I can only assume they are trying to make the online code useful only to those that have the book - the reality being that it's almost less useful.
It adds a buck. It is useful for 10% of those who buy it, and it is a marketting gimmick. There really isn't a reason to not go with it.
But PLEASE include the text of the book on CD if you can manage it! PLEASE?!??!
-Adam
To clarify that facsimile transmissions, electronic mail, and other similar methods of delivery are direct mail for purposes of the direct mail exemption;
is one of the major changes that this rule will make. I do not know what the rules are for Direct Mail, but you can bet it would allow spammers some legal lattitude that they currently do not have... Email should not be classified as DIRECT MAIL in this ruling - it's almost tacked on. They should make a completely seperate ruling for email, preferably clarifying that it is unlike mail and facsimile in major ways...
-Adam
No, the laws about telemarketing do NOT apply. You are signing up for an email service. Have you read their service agreement lately? If you never signed up for mail then normal telemarketing laws/regulations would apply, but since you signed up for their service you agreed to whatever they got you to agree to - including being able to change their service agreement and privacy policy without notice and at will.
Oh - I forgot - you don't spend time reading those, do you?
-Adam
The entertainment industry was built around the fact that it cost money to distribute the entertainment. As distribution channels changed (and became cheaper) the industry adapted in more and more profitable ways. The internet gives us an opportunity to shortcut that (again), and cut out the middleman. The industry, obviously, is searching for ways to adapt and become even more profitable - now they can get the customer to pay for the content, and distribution. Their charges are now all profit.
The problem is that the creaters of content are so intertwined with the distributers that it'll be a long time before we see creators uncoupled from the providers. In the meantime you find that providers will only support creators that do it their way, ie, exclusively through proper channels. They also act as the middlemen between the advertisers and the creators in the case of 'free' content such as TV.
We won't see independant creaters even near the quality of current movies/music/shows/series until we show creaters that it is worth their time. The model that premium cable channels have (no ads, full unlimited access) needs to be adopted. But - guess what - no one will pay for that model. Not yet, anyway...
-Adam
- Cheap
- Fast
- Low to no cooling requirments
Of course your 7.2k scsi drives run well - first of all you don't put them in cheap, poorly designed cases. Secondly they are not inexpensive, and much of that extra money goes toward making them last longer - one way to make something last longer is to lower its heat buildup.Cheap drives cut corners on motors, bearings, and well-engineered cases. So cool fast drives cost more money than cool slow drives or hot fast drives.
-Adam
I see duplicate stories.
They're everywhere -
They don't even know they're duplicate...
-Adam
7200 RPM drives run hotter than previous drives, and they must be cooled. Previously people rarely gave a thought to drive cooling, and if they don't take it into account now they will see large failure rates. If your drive is too hot to touch after running for an hour, then you need to cool it off.
I've been installing 7200 rpm IDE drives into servers and workstations for well over a year now, and the only complete failure I've had was one that didn't work from the start. I've had drive errors crop up from heat (put a fan in, seperate it from other equipment (don't sandwich it between the floppy and zip), etc) and from using a 40-wire IDE cable instead of the ata-100 80-wire cables.
FWIW, I've used Fujitsu until a few months ago, IBM, Maxtor, and few seagates. They have all been at the lower end of the price range ($99 wholesale - went from 10G to 20G and currently using 40G).
-Adam
Anyone building their own system should pay attention to heat problems. I'll bet that you won't see these drives failing in systems built by Dell and others, they have engineers to deal with airflow and heat removal. If you put a fast drive in a case meant for a piddly 5400rpm drive, then you're begging for trouble. All the systems I build and sell with 7200 or greater RPM drives have fans blowing air on and around the drives. Any fast drive is going to fail without direct heat sinking and airflow.
This is a lesson learned from installing a dozen fast track raid cards into servers, with the second drive (and often both) being 7200RPM drives. We had all sorts of failures until we looked at the case airflow.
Obviously, however, the IBM drives are failing at a higher rate than other manufacturers. The reason is probably due to slightly smaller tolerances given for heat problems. The other big problem is selling their drives to the inexperienced consumers - one of the reasons you can find certian drives only in prebuilt systems. The manufacturer knows to sell only to people who know what their doing.
With the hard drive being the slowest component in the system (the bottle neck) people want to get the faster drive, but they fail to think of it in terms of heat production. As much time needs to be spent dealing the the hard drive's heat sinking as with the processor's heat sinking.
-Adam
There are many other costs associated with running a business - taking care of the employee might be one of the easiest. Also given that this is a government project, there is more red tape to deal with. The thing is, it's possible to do it now at this price, think how much more easily it'll be accomplished with off-the-shelf hardware 3 years from now. Only, they can't wait that long to start...
-Adam
Select the JukeBox playback mode beforehand, because you can only select songs here (no lists, or albums), and max. 16 songs can be pre-programmed. All you have to tell your guests is to turn the driving knob to search, press it to select and add to the program. This is something even girls can remember, or if not, boys will surly be happy to help
Sorry, couldn't help sharing this 'tip' from their website. Could be a cultural thing - I'm interested to see if the tips have such useful information in the other language on their site.
-Adam
So what they're really saying is:
;-). The LCD, touchscreen and battery will cost $30-40 together, and the processor, mainboard, and all associated electronics will be another $10-20. The enclosure will be maybe $5. Cheap labor would be $1-5.
We want to give a $50,000,000 dollar contract to a company that can provide 500,000 rugged, easy to use, long lasting (14 hours of active use per charge minimum), PDAs with GPS and wireless communications.
That should be relatively simple, if they use a free OS. They don't need to be color, though it might help. They do need to be very easily visible. The display can be a larger 1/4 vga screen, which should be much less expensive to make than the current color PDA screens.
So, let's see... About twice as thick as an IPAQ, and about as wide and long as the old newtons. It wouldn't need to be a real computer, so you could go with only flash to hold the (optional) OS and program code with a compactflash slot for long term storage. The GPS unit will cost $10-15 in quantity, as will the GSM (or APRS, or 802.11b
Cost each unit:$56 - 80. The R&D (as well as breathing room for unexpected problems) would soak up the last $44-20.
This could be done in two years, including the development of software that is easily configurable to make census forms and input, enable the communications across the network, etc.
At the high end, it would leave $10,000,000 for the company doing the development, equivilant to 40 salaried employees for five years at $50,000/yr (yes, some would be more, a few would be less, but the dev time should be less than 3 years, and fewer than 40 employees are needed.) If the company doing the work generalizes the PDA enough(maybe adding local networking to the national networking, etc) then they could sell additional units to other customers. Hobbyists would pay a little for it, but it would mostly stay in the corporate sector.
That's my bid. I estimate about one year to get the company up and running, one year R&D, two years active development, one year for a limited test run, one year for a production run and distribution, and two years breathing room. The software will allow full remote updating, real time statistics collection, we'll engineer the systems needed to run the entire show, and contract the necessary infrastructure for the wireless data collection.
-Adam
If the EULA you read for the software that installed NEW.NET didn't force you to waive liability from new.net, and new.net didn't give you a EULA that waived their liability, then you could claim they are liable for the destruction of data and software on your PC, since you never waived such liability.
Seriously. Check with a lawyer.
-Adam
Ah, but to enact a judiciary means that they will have to actually persecute actions contrary to their rules and regulations using due process, maybe even a jury of the defendant's peers. Right now, without a judiciary, they can simply decide whether the defendant is doing bad and do whatever they like (within their power - revoke a domain, etc)
What I was saying is that it's a lot easier (path of least resistance) to run a club than a government. We must treat it as a governement if we expect change, even if it is missing key features of what we would consider a true gov't.
The true test will come when they try to take over other territory, such as W3C. They won't have a 'typical' military, and no one will call it a 'war', but it will essentially be combat (political) for cyberspace rights.
-Adam
So, what we're seeing here is the same process that goes into forming a gov't. The people want representation, but the gov't claims they don't want huge processes, so they may allow other gov'ts to suggest (or maybe appoint) members of the board, but then you'll have the same problem of a country of states - some gov'ts represent a larger portion of the internet population, so we should get more representatives, but other smaller countries would be equally drowned out, so we set it up like the US republic?
No, this is going to be another "Good old boy" club, where all the board memebers do things for each other and for their own prestige and power. They nominate others who will help them in their own work, and shun anyone that doesn't comply.
They claim no responsability to anyone, least of all their users, so they will actually become targets of corporate lobbies and 'gifts'.
So, let's look back on history, and see if we can find examples of how such organizations and governements were effectively changed by their citizens.
Move along, nothing to see here, politics as usual.
-Adam
Chances are you have a few options. University of Michigan, for instance, has free lawyers for their students who could at least tell you where you stand legally and what your options might be. You likely have other processes you can go through - you are paying for the dorm room with includes the service, bring it up with the administration of the dorms. Take it to a higher level, and show in what ways this has damaged your ability to do schoolwork. We also have a student government we pay dues to. They represent us to some extent to the administration, and you could talk to your student body representative. It'll give you experience for when you find out that you can't play your newest dvds on your home player since the MPAA turned it off and you need to talk to your senator or house rep to get them to overturn the new "Your content are belong to MPAA" amendment.
But reality is that they control the network, and they likely don't report to anyone that you can influence.
Asking for legal opinion on slashdot is pretty short sighted though. Sounds like you just wanted a public place to vent.
-Adam
They don't need to test new weapons, they just need to get a copy of Worms Armageddon or Worms World Party and study the Gopher weapon. He burrows, then *BOOM!*, all gone, go bye-bye.
-Adam
You need to either 1) find a computer that was meant for use on a boat, or 2) find an enclosure and peripherals which is meant to house a computer on a boat.
Normal computers are not hardened enough for that environment, nor do they take well to non-ventilated boxes. You can (if you want) look at computers meant for industrial and food service use. Food factories have to be able to wash down every surface that is open to the processing area, and industrial computers can take that abuse and often more. It'll probably be cheaper to get a computer from a company that makes one specifically for boats.
If you insist on doing it without specialized components, well, good luck. Salt air will eat through computer parts like you wouldn't believe.
-Adam
The sea, she is a hungry creature, no?
The reason you find very few options for doing this is because there is almost always a better, cheaper, faster way of grabbing a screen without actually reading and interpretting the output.
A better Ask Slashdot tells us what you're trying to accomplish, and why you've dismissed the 'obvious' solutions (such as software, or a card inside the computer, etc).
The only reason I can see where you'd have to do it this way is if you don't have full access to the computer (can't load software, can't open case, trying to circumvent digital copyright protection, etc), but you still want to see what's on the screen.
I've been thinking about this for awhile mainly because I have to monitor hundreds of computers remotely. In some cases I need to control them before the system completes the boot-up process (ie, before software can be loaded), and in other cases I'm using operating systems for which inexpensive software is not available even after boot up. The solution I'm leaning toward is custom hardware (everything runs at 640x480 or less) which compresses and sends the signal over modem or tcp/ip. I haven't implemented it yet, but I enjoy thinking about it. Capturing higher resolution pictures is more involved.
Speaking of which, what do you need to do, exaclty? Do you just want to capture screen shots, or are you interested in spying on the stream in real (or near real) time? Do you need to capture those streams? How much color depth do you need? What's your budget? Does it need to be user friendly, or geek friendly?
-Adam
Judges know when they've made a good ruling if both parties are unhappy. ;-)
-Adam