There is a huge difference between PCs and the iPhone. It also happens to be the difference between PCs and video game consoles: PCs are open hardware platforms, whereas the iPhone is not.
No, there is a third (and more likely, IMHO) option, which is that AOL/Google creates a jabber gateway that only works for google talk users. At least at first.
Even if it doesn't open up AIM completely, it will allow people to more easily migrate to an open IM platform via google talk (jabber/xmpp).
You realize IPv6 has more IP's then there are atoms in the universe, right?
False.
Let's do some math.
2^128 is approximately equal to 10^38 last time I checked. I may be off by an order of magnitude or two, but who cares.
There are at least 10^79 electrons in the universe. While this is not the number of atoms, let's just be generous and say that there are only 10^77 atoms in the universe—around 100 electrons per atom.
10^38 is much less than 10^77, by 39 decimal places.
It's a travesty, that's for sure. A 1/10th of that would have funded my (now defunct) company for years. Hell, even 1/1000th of that would have quadrupled our bootstrap operating capital.
> Because it is not a good source of energy in its present state.
That would explain why the French and Japanese have abandoned it.
Nuclear power is orders of magnitude safer than it was decades ago. I'd much rather have a source of energy with a waste that I can dispose of in a controlled fashion rather than one which pours pollutants into the air we breathe. The only reason we don't use more nuclear energy here in the US is because of politics, not science or practicality.
Not to say anything about Iran having nuclear capability. I'll pass speculating on that hot-potato.
One thing that sets Jabber/XMPP apart from other IM systems is the concept of a transport. This allows you to communicate with everyone on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ as if they were all using jabber. Thus, from one jabber client you can have connectivity to everything. For example, I use MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and even IRC directly from iChat now.
Jabber is not just "Yet Another Instant Messenger". It is the Instant Messenger protocol to replace all proprietary instant messaging systems. Like email, it is flexible enough to allow anyone who set up a server and have it interoperate with everyone else's server. Unlike email, it has strong authentication, which thwarts SPAM.
If google is releasing an IM service based on Jabber/XMPP, then it is truly a great thing.
Perhaps it would. This would also fix the whole freezing problem. However, that stuff is quite volatile, and would react much more explosively than a punctured CO2 cylinder. Without very careful testing, it would likely cause a catastrophic underwater explosion which would result in the loss of the vehicle
This is not a balloon system, it is an emergency ballast tank purge. Under nominal operation, the ballast tanks would be used control the ability to sink/rise, using a mechanism to electronically flood/purge the tanks. This is an entirely separate system than the emergency purge mechanism, which would only be used in the event of some sort of catastrophic failure.
The goal is to purge the ballast tanks, this means we have to fill them with some sort of gas to force the water out. An explosion alone will not achieve this goal.
Not sure if you could equip a toy with an emergency blow apparatus.
Actually, this is something that I have given a considerable amount of thought to, as I was planning on building something similar in high school.
The mechanism would use a standard CO2 cylinder, the kind that is usually punctured with a needle and used to power pellet guns, air dusters, etc. Except instead of puncturing it with a pin (which sounded a bit too complex and prone to failure), it would be punctured using an electronically-detonated mild explosive charge. (With a explosive power similar to that of a black cat, if you are familiar with those types of fireworks).
The CO2 cylinder would be mounted in a small double-capped PVC pipe, with a brass nozzle attached to the cap on the business end of the CO2 cylinder. A tube would be connected to the brass nozzle, which would then be connected to the ballast tanks. The CO2 cylinder would be permanently attached to the opposite side of the PVC with some sort of epoxy. The mild explosive would be detonated using a rocketry igniter.
Remember, this thing is the "oh shit" scenario, so you want to make sure that this thing is gonna definitely work, and you only need it to work once. It doesn't need to be reusable, you would replace it after using it.
When a suitable electronic pulse is sent to the device(~6 volts), the explosive charge would detnoate, rupturing the CO2 canister and releasing the CO2 into the tube attached to the nozzle. The tube would be connected to the ballast, and thus the balast would be purged and the vehicle would surface.
Having actually never built one of these things there are a few potential issues:
1) The CO2 that is going to be released is going to be very cold. It is possible that it could freeze the water on contact and jam, which could cause the purge to fail and the vehicle to not immediately surface. (I believe a similar problem also caused the loss of a US nuclear submarine) 2) Puncturing the business-end of the CO2 cylinder with a mild explosive charge may prove to be more difficult than I initially anticipated. I'm sure this could be corrected with experimentation.
Anyway... yeah, fun thought experiment from back in high-school. Shame I never got enough people interested to actually attempt it.
(or 1 or 100 watts if it's spread spectrum like WiFi)
WiFi is not spread spectrum. Bluetooth, however, is.
But anybody can listen to anything they want, and can make antennas for receiving of any sort. In fact, as long as you're only receiving and not transmitting, I don't see how wardriving could ever be illegal.
This is one reason I am glad I live in America rather than England, where you have to have a license to tune in. Yuck.
The FCC regulations limit the amount of power you can transmit with, and it's based either on effective radiated power or volts/meter. Either way, any sort of directional antenna (like a cantenna) increases these figures without increasing the total power, and therefore exceed the FCC permitted power (unless they reduce their transmitter power by a similar amount, of course. Which they probably don't do.)
Doesn't the FCC make an exception for purely directional antennas like parabolics and cantennas? I believe they can be much more powerful so long as they are radiating the majority of their power in one direction.
You are quite lucky. My Tungsten C crashes all the time. Not with hacks or some custom installed software... But the software in ROM--specifically the web browser. All the time. total crap.
MacOS X has always supported 3+ mouse buttons and the scroll wheel. Plug it in, and it just works. Even my Microsoft Bluetooth mouse with the scroll wheel that does horizontal scrolling works perfectly, with no drivers to install.
The first thing I do when I buy a new mac is toss the mouse. Too bad I can't add an extra button to my Powerbook.
VirtualPC would run at full speed because it would not have to dynamically recompile x86 code into PPC code. An updated/optimized version of VritualPC for Intel macs would operate much like VMWare. Anything else would be a waste of cycles.
I believe it will be the opposite effect -- if people get MacOSX to run at all, people (generally assumed to be stupid) will still think that it should still "just work" even though it is pirated and not running on official hardware.
ie: if it runs like crap, people who see it are going to implicitly blame Apple--even though it is totally not their fault. This will hurt Apple's image.
The ability to run MacOSX on anything but official Apple hardware is very bad for Apple.
One nice thing about running on Intel chips is that VirtualPC can run at full speed. Weeeeeeeeeeeee.:)
Better yet, uninstall the game and get him some educational software. Math Munchers, Zoombies, or Carmen Sandiego are all excellent choices to get him to think. After his allotted playtime, ask him what he's learned.
Bleh. I hated these games. They didn't make me think, they made me bored. My advice would be to teach him to use a computer constructively. I use to play a fair amount of video games until I found the best video game of them all: GCC.
In response to another post you made: Yes, I agree that it is possible for someone to raise themselves above the ignorance and neglect of their parents and excel in ways they never did. However I believe this to be the exception, not the rule. It would seem that a great deal of parents these days just have no backbone, such as the grandparent of this post: He is short-circuiting a perfect opportunity to teach his child self-discipline.
If this company can do what it claims it can with their "virtual algorithm", then they have the capability to wreck havoc with much more than just P2P--because they are implying that they have broken MD5(or SHA1) in such a way that would make it completely useless as a secure hashing mechanism.
I know that MD5 is no longer considered to be a secure hash, but the scale upon which this company is claiming is simply staggering. Their claim implies that they can generate a chunk of data that is the same size and with the same MD5 has as a different chunk of data--and that they can do so quickly enough to make a business model out of destroying P2P.
This is a bullshit claim, unless they aren't talking about MD5 or SHA1. But if they aren't talking about MD5 or SHA1, then who cares?
> How about the C-130 transport aircraft? It still uses fricking props!
You say that as if propellors are less desirable than jet propulsion for aircraft. (Of course, after typing out this long reply, I now see that you and I are largely making the same point, but why waste such a good explanation?) This is true only if we are talking about props powered by internal combustion engines--but the C-130 is powered by turbo-prop engines.
It is really a matter of different strengths and weaknesses. In the case of the C-130, a turbo-prop engine was "the best tool for the job". In a way, it is already a jet aircraft--except that the propulsion comes from the propellor rather than from the exhaust.
And in order to stay on topic... a random comment about STS
The most flawed aspect of the STS is the Solid Rocket Boosters(SRBs). The soviet shuttle system (Often called Buran, after the name of the first soviet orbiter) recognized this and did away with solid propellant altogether.
So I checked the SolarDeathRay.com site statistics around noon today (Tuesday), and I was shocked to see that there had been about 80,000 page views that day.
That was yesterday. I bet he's in for a suprise when he looks at the logs today.:)
It is also largely irrelevant to everyone else in the world. The only people that this would affect is scientists who are doing very, very precise measurements--virtually all of whom use the metric system, american or not.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a huge difference between PCs and the iPhone. It also happens to be the difference between PCs and video game consoles: PCs are open hardware platforms, whereas the iPhone is not.
No, there is a third (and more likely, IMHO) option, which is that AOL/Google creates a jabber gateway that only works for google talk users. At least at first.
Even if it doesn't open up AIM completely, it will allow people to more easily migrate to an open IM platform via google talk (jabber/xmpp).
Let's do some math.
2^128 is approximately equal to 10^38 last time I checked. I may be off by an order of magnitude or two, but who cares.
There are at least 10^79 electrons in the universe. While this is not the number of atoms, let's just be generous and say that there are only 10^77 atoms in the universe—around 100 electrons per atom.
10^38 is much less than 10^77, by 39 decimal places.
Word.
It's a travesty, that's for sure. A 1/10th of that would have funded my (now defunct) company for years. Hell, even 1/1000th of that would have quadrupled our bootstrap operating capital.
Crazy.
I was being sarcastic. Not only do they both use nuclear power, but they rely on nuclear power.
> Because it is not a good source of energy in its present state.
That would explain why the French and Japanese have abandoned it.
Nuclear power is orders of magnitude safer than it was decades ago. I'd much rather have a source of energy with a waste that I can dispose of in a controlled fashion rather than one which pours pollutants into the air we breathe. The only reason we don't use more nuclear energy here in the US is because of politics, not science or practicality.
Not to say anything about Iran having nuclear capability. I'll pass speculating on that hot-potato.
One thing that sets Jabber/XMPP apart from other IM systems is the concept of a transport. This allows you to communicate with everyone on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ as if they were all using jabber. Thus, from one jabber client you can have connectivity to everything. For example, I use MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and even IRC directly from iChat now.
Jabber is not just "Yet Another Instant Messenger". It is the Instant Messenger protocol to replace all proprietary instant messaging systems. Like email, it is flexible enough to allow anyone who set up a server and have it interoperate with everyone else's server. Unlike email, it has strong authentication, which thwarts SPAM.
If google is releasing an IM service based on Jabber/XMPP, then it is truly a great thing.
Perhaps it would. This would also fix the whole freezing problem. However, that stuff is quite volatile, and would react much more explosively than a punctured CO2 cylinder. Without very careful testing, it would likely cause a catastrophic underwater explosion which would result in the loss of the vehicle
This is not a balloon system, it is an emergency ballast tank purge. Under nominal operation, the ballast tanks would be used control the ability to sink/rise, using a mechanism to electronically flood/purge the tanks. This is an entirely separate system than the emergency purge mechanism, which would only be used in the event of some sort of catastrophic failure.
At least, that was how I designed it.
The goal is to purge the ballast tanks, this means we have to fill them with some sort of gas to force the water out. An explosion alone will not achieve this goal.
The mechanism would use a standard CO2 cylinder, the kind that is usually punctured with a needle and used to power pellet guns, air dusters, etc. Except instead of puncturing it with a pin (which sounded a bit too complex and prone to failure), it would be punctured using an electronically-detonated mild explosive charge. (With a explosive power similar to that of a black cat, if you are familiar with those types of fireworks).
The CO2 cylinder would be mounted in a small double-capped PVC pipe, with a brass nozzle attached to the cap on the business end of the CO2 cylinder. A tube would be connected to the brass nozzle, which would then be connected to the ballast tanks. The CO2 cylinder would be permanently attached to the opposite side of the PVC with some sort of epoxy. The mild explosive would be detonated using a rocketry igniter.
Remember, this thing is the "oh shit" scenario, so you want to make sure that this thing is gonna definitely work, and you only need it to work once. It doesn't need to be reusable, you would replace it after using it.
When a suitable electronic pulse is sent to the device(~6 volts), the explosive charge would detnoate, rupturing the CO2 canister and releasing the CO2 into the tube attached to the nozzle. The tube would be connected to the ballast, and thus the balast would be purged and the vehicle would surface.
Having actually never built one of these things there are a few potential issues:
1) The CO2 that is going to be released is going to be very cold. It is possible that it could freeze the water on contact and jam, which could cause the purge to fail and the vehicle to not immediately surface. (I believe a similar problem also caused the loss of a US nuclear submarine)
2) Puncturing the business-end of the CO2 cylinder with a mild explosive charge may prove to be more difficult than I initially anticipated. I'm sure this could be corrected with experimentation.
Anyway... yeah, fun thought experiment from back in high-school. Shame I never got enough people interested to actually attempt it.
This is one reason I am glad I live in America rather than England, where you have to have a license to tune in. Yuck.
Doesn't the FCC make an exception for purely directional antennas like parabolics and cantennas? I believe they can be much more powerful so long as they are radiating the majority of their power in one direction.
I could be wrong though. Correct me if I am.
You are quite lucky. My Tungsten C crashes all the time. Not with hacks or some custom installed software... But the software in ROM--specifically the web browser. All the time. total crap.
What is so disgusting is that it didn't have to be this way. The more people just accept it, the more crap will turn out this way.
MacOS X has always supported 3+ mouse buttons and the scroll wheel. Plug it in, and it just works. Even my Microsoft Bluetooth mouse with the scroll wheel that does horizontal scrolling works perfectly, with no drivers to install.
The first thing I do when I buy a new mac is toss the mouse. Too bad I can't add an extra button to my Powerbook.
VirtualPC would run at full speed because it would not have to dynamically recompile x86 code into PPC code. An updated/optimized version of VritualPC for Intel macs would operate much like VMWare. Anything else would be a waste of cycles.
I believe it will be the opposite effect -- if people get MacOSX to run at all, people (generally assumed to be stupid) will still think that it should still "just work" even though it is pirated and not running on official hardware.
:)
ie: if it runs like crap, people who see it are going to implicitly blame Apple--even though it is totally not their fault. This will hurt Apple's image.
The ability to run MacOSX on anything but official Apple hardware is very bad for Apple.
One nice thing about running on Intel chips is that VirtualPC can run at full speed. Weeeeeeeeeeeee.
Bleh. I hated these games. They didn't make me think, they made me bored. My advice would be to teach him to use a computer constructively. I use to play a fair amount of video games until I found the best video game of them all: GCC.
In response to another post you made: Yes, I agree that it is possible for someone to raise themselves above the ignorance and neglect of their parents and excel in ways they never did. However I believe this to be the exception, not the rule. It would seem that a great deal of parents these days just have no backbone, such as the grandparent of this post: He is short-circuiting a perfect opportunity to teach his child self-discipline.
If this company can do what it claims it can with their "virtual algorithm", then they have the capability to wreck havoc with much more than just P2P--because they are implying that they have broken MD5(or SHA1) in such a way that would make it completely useless as a secure hashing mechanism.
I know that MD5 is no longer considered to be a secure hash, but the scale upon which this company is claiming is simply staggering. Their claim implies that they can generate a chunk of data that is the same size and with the same MD5 has as a different chunk of data--and that they can do so quickly enough to make a business model out of destroying P2P.
This is a bullshit claim, unless they aren't talking about MD5 or SHA1. But if they aren't talking about MD5 or SHA1, then who cares?
I did this the other day. Works fine without any other software.
> How about the C-130 transport aircraft? It still uses fricking props!
You say that as if propellors are less desirable than jet propulsion for aircraft. (Of course, after typing out this long reply, I now see that you and I are largely making the same point, but why waste such a good explanation?) This is true only if we are talking about props powered by internal combustion engines--but the C-130 is powered by turbo-prop engines.
It is really a matter of different strengths and weaknesses. In the case of the C-130, a turbo-prop engine was "the best tool for the job". In a way, it is already a jet aircraft--except that the propulsion comes from the propellor rather than from the exhaust.
And in order to stay on topic... a random comment about STS
The most flawed aspect of the STS is the Solid Rocket Boosters(SRBs). The soviet shuttle system (Often called Buran, after the name of the first soviet orbiter) recognized this and did away with solid propellant altogether.
It was in my opinion a superior launch system and orbiter, even if it was a blatant rip-off. Buran also looked cooler too. Too bad it is now scrap. The one intact Buran shuttle that survived the fall of the soviet union did not survive the fall of the ceiling in the building it was housed in. So sad.
But eh. Yeah. Props still have their place.
noon today (Tuesday), and I was shocked to see that there
had been about 80,000 page views that day.
That was yesterday. I bet he's in for a suprise when he looks at the logs today.
It is also largely irrelevant to everyone else in the world. The only people that this would affect is scientists who are doing very, very precise measurements--virtually all of whom use the metric system, american or not.