"It is my understanding"
So again, no proof. If you can't back up what you say, then don't say it. At least cite a reputable source or something... Just saying " It is my understanding" doesn't cut it.
Re:Full text of the main page (w/ bad formatting)
on
Furby Bounty Paid
·
· Score: 2
Hack Furby Challenge Won!
LOS ALTOS, Calif., Nov 13 2000. The "Hack Furby" Challenge has been won.
Furby [TM Tiger Electronics] was the smash hit toy of Christmas 1998 and after. Furby is a small furry doll with an electro-mechanical interior that lets it run through a pre-programmed repertoire of speech and movement. Furbies gradually let out more speech and
actions the more you handle them, creating a powerful illusion that they learn. In fact the customer has no ability to make a Furby act
in a way different to the way it was programmed at the factory. Up till now...
The Hack Furby Challenge
In January 1999, Silicon Valley-based engineer Peter van der Linden issued a challenge to the computer engineering world through his
website http://www.afu.com "Make Furby re-programmable!" Author of several books on computer programming, including the best-selling
Just Java 2, van der Linden explained his challenge thus: "Being an inveterate gadget lover and tinkerer, I bought one of the first Furbies
available and dismantled it.
The potential for Furby to become a general purpose computing device was immediately obvious. The thing already has a CPU and is
bristling with peripherals including infrared I/O, several motion detectors, eye and mouth movements, a loudspeaker and a microphone. All it
needed was a little encouragement from me to get a great set of Open Source community engineers working on it." If Furby could be
re-programmed by its users, it would become a much more interesting and educational device. Instead of listening to your Furby talk
"Furbish", you could play chess with it. Instead of pressing your Furby's beak, you could have it announce your email or calendar
appointments. You can have Furby record voice memos or phone calls for later replay. You can program Furby to solve mathematical
puzzles and equations, to look for Mersenne prime numbers, or simply to act as a speaking clock. Rework the mouth servo with hydraulics to
open beer cans, have the only speaking garden gnome on the block. Heck, it doesn't really matter, the point is to create individual
conceptual art from mass-produced ephemera.
Furby designer Dave Hampton strongly opposed allowing sophisticated users to customize the device. Hampton had seen earlier toys like Microsoft's "Barney the Talking Dinosaur"
product subverted by graduate students, who put colorful expletives into the mouth of the purple behemoth. The Redmond monopoly provided the software for the talking Barney toy.
Tough Work
Hampton wanted to prevent owners from creating "potty-mouth Furby" and Tiger Electronics (the Furby distributor) wanted to frustrate competitors from copying the design. As a
result, the cpu and memory of each Furby are encased in a tough shell of resin. There is no practical way to break through to examine the electronics without shattering them in the
process. Furby hacking contrasts with the Lego Mindstorms toy, which embraced and co-opted the freelance development community, selling a lot more product in the process. The
active opposition of designer and manufacturer made Furby hacking significantly harder. But the development community views Furby's lack of programmability as a design flaw or
bug, and all bugs (no matter how tough) yield in the end.
"I knew it would be quite difficult to crack Furby security and create a user-programmable version of Furby, so I offered a cash prize as an incentive to try" said van der Linden. Prizes
of this kind were often staked by industrialists in the early days of aviation, to encourage new designs and faster progress.
And The Winner Is...!
The prize of two hundred and fifty dollars was won by Canadian computer consultant Jeffrey Gibbons, who submitted the winning prototype by Fedex. The design is being published
to the public under the terms of the competition, and orders are being taken for a "Hack Furby" kit over the Internet.
"The cash prize is just a token," explained van der Linden, "The real prize is the bragging rights to the accomplishment, and the benefit of sharing it with the world. Computer Science
departments can now base their real-time programming courses on this very low-cost equipment."
One of the first re-programmed Furbies will be sent to the mother who contacted van der Linden early in the challenge. She noticed the speech of her autistic son improved greatly
when interacting with the Furby. But she was despondent about the gibberish that the standard Furby talks. That mother was anxious to find a Furby that could be upgraded with
normal speech, to help autistic children relate to the the real world. Her son's Furby will now be delivered in time for Christmas, thanks to the "Hack Furby Challenge" (subject to kit
production). Parents of autistic children everywhere will value the chance to transform Furby from a trivial amusement into an educational aid.
A Challenge For Software Folks
There is always a higher mountain to climb, and van der Linden plans to issue a new challenge. "Now that the original problem has been solved, I plan
to stake a new prize for the first person to port a Java Virtual Machine to this architecture. The Java 2 Micro Edition is wonderfully suitable for driving
the embedded Furby processor, at the same time allowing programmers to write high-level portable code." The first Furby challenge was for hardware
folks; this new challenge allows software experts to show their skills.
A Java virtual machine has already been ported to the Lego Mindstorms computer. TinyVM is an open source JavaTM based replacement firmware
for the Lego MindstormsTM RCX microcontroller. The RCX is a programmable brick that comes with Lego's Robotics Invention SystemTM. For further
details on the Java/Lego system see http://lejos.sourceforge.net/. If Java can run on a Lego block, it can definitely run on a Furby.
What of the original prototype, the world's first user-programmable Furby? "It's standing on my kitchen table right now, being eyed warily by my dogs"
laughs van der Linden, "I think I'll offer it to the Smithsonian in due course".
>Furthermore, I've not seen the inside guts of this cube, >but I would be very surprised if the video is on a PCI card. >In keeping with Apple tradition it's probably >soldered right to the mainboard.
That is certianly not the case now. I have a G4 right next to me and the Rage 128 is sitting right in the AGP slot. It was really easy for me to check too:-)
Also, don't knock the 128 too badly; it plays Unreal Tournament quite nicely at highest quality. I didn't mess with Quake too much, but it played smoothly too.
Well, you may be right. It may not be censorship by the strictest definition, but these new rules would tell people what they can and cannot do with their domains. If someone says "You can't sell a product from a personal domain," they are banning commercial speech in that sector. Sounds something like censorship to me. If that's not censorship, then what is it?
The problem with your suggestions is that there are many gray areas inbetween strictly commercial and strictly personal.
For instance, say I register a personal web site. I then make some really nice free software that is quite successful. "Yay!" says me. "I'd like to do this for a living. Maybe I can sell support and put in new features for a fee!"
Now, should I be forced to register a new domain so I can sell support for my software? What if all the domains that match my software's name are taken?
I personally don't think strict enforcement of content separation is a good idea. People change, and so do websites. Forcing people to use their domains for specific things seems too much like censorship to me!
***Why Blame a 15 kid when the real culprit is a multi-billion dollar software companies crappy software??***
First of all, we don't know how old this person is. The "I hate to go to school" phrase could be delibrately misleading.
Second, Microsoft is not completely at fault. Sure, one should take security seriously, but those that actually do the damage are the ones truly at fault. You're saying that if I leave my house unlocked and someone steals my VCR, I'm the culprit. Now, my negligence would mean that I am partially to blame. But that doesn't justify someone stealing my VCR.
>Are there any mainstream distributions that >include Wine ready-to-run?
I'm using Mandrake 6.1 right now and it came with Wine inluded...
Re:It's all in the ROM
on
Linux on Palm
·
· Score: 1
Well, it may be TECHNICALLY feasible, but ROM is a piece of hardware, so if you were planning on having your own customized ROM chips made, you'd require a fabrication plant of some sort to stamp out the chip.
That is true for the Palm IIIe, but the other Palms have flash ROM. Switching to linux should just involve a quick flash.
   Now, let me ask you moderators something...    How can this post be redundant?   It was the first one, so wouldn't the later posts be the redundant ones?   I think some of you are a little trigger happy.   Heaven forbid that a first post might have some merit.
While this may be old hat to some, I doubt I'm the only one to be new to this.
Install was simple; I ran the install script and rebooted. After loading, I was prompted to select a geographic region and a screen resolution. While the color depth was limited to 256, the resolutions went fairly high.
Dialup setup was easy; I entered my DNS address, username, password, and authentication method. I was connected on the first try at 48,800. Don't even bother if you have a win modem.
The 3 plug-ins worked nicely, but the telnet client was the most useful. I was able to check my e-mail and edit files, ect.
The web server worked like a, ahem, charm. Just don't try to serve and browse at the same time. Browser performance was flaky after the first hit.
The web browser itself was like an older version of Netscape, but with fewer features. Data transfer performance was sluggish compared to other platforms. On the whole, though, the system was usable. Yahoo, CNet, ZDnet, Deja.com, News.com, and of course Slashdot rendered nicely.
This seems like something that would be a nice supplement to all those mini one disk Linux distros out there. Sometimes a portable GUI browser is nice to have. You guys/gals should give this a try.
  Come now, let's not be stupid. One would need at least a 450mhz G3 to smoothly surf the web. Why else would Intel ship chips designed to speed up net access? People must need it, or Intel wouldn't make it. Same for Apple- they know how much horsepower is needed to do what most people need...:-)
   I don't see how others doing bad things makes it OK for Apple to do bad things.    I think Apple's dishonesty with benchmarks is shameful.
   I do agree though, that Apple is good about sticking to public standards.   I guess this is one example of the love/hate response Apple draws.
>>It's great that Apple finally recognizes their market and has put a big honking subwoofer in the case. Now if they would just strip out all the extraneous electronics in there that spoils the acoustics..
The new iMacs don't have subwoofers built in; that's an extra $100. They do have improved speakers, though I don't know exactly by how much they've improved.
>> Good is Blueberry: 350 Processor, 32 RAM, 6 gigs, USB, Slot load CD, Rage 128 and Harmon/Kardon speakers.
The $999 machine comes with 64 meg ram. After seeing the hardware Apple has come out with lately, I have a feeling I'll become a mac convert. I've been working with macs at work, and have really enjoyed the experience.
And, I have to admit that the case stylings are cool. I don't care what all you macho geeky 'computers must be ugly' guys think; a nice package is never a bad thing. So in short, my next computer will most likely be a mac, provided Apple doesn't find some way to kill Linux support on the platform.
Besides all this, just think what this means for non computer literate family members. My mom, for instance, is almost afraid of computers. iMacs are non threatening, fun looking, and compact. Practically, they're great for internet use, come with a very nice works suite, and have the power to handle pretty much anything your average user will want to do. Plus, I'd have to spend less time maintaining the things.
In the fall of '98 I had to use TP7 DOS or TP1.5 WIN for my Intro to Programming class. Cost 50 USD:-) TP7 is very fast and elegant. I hope they release it soon.
I had to pick my jaw up as well. AOL is well on it's way to being another Micosoft. I wonder if they'll mess with winamp's price. Will they continue to charge a paltry $10 or make it free?
Slashdot Mirror
NEWS FLASH! Adobe Hides Customer Information!
From the article:
While many people believe that Adobe products are DRM-free, did you know that they, in fact, have a "poison tip?"
"It is my understanding" So again, no proof. If you can't back up what you say, then don't say it. At least cite a reputable source or something... Just saying " It is my understanding" doesn't cut it.
Hack Furby Challenge Won!
LOS ALTOS, Calif., Nov 13 2000. The "Hack Furby" Challenge has been won.
Furby [TM Tiger Electronics] was the smash hit toy of Christmas 1998 and after. Furby is a small furry doll with an electro-mechanical interior that lets it run through a pre-programmed repertoire of speech and movement. Furbies gradually let out more speech and
actions the more you handle them, creating a powerful illusion that they learn. In fact the customer has no ability to make a Furby act
in a way different to the way it was programmed at the factory. Up till now...
The Hack Furby Challenge
In January 1999, Silicon Valley-based engineer Peter van der Linden issued a challenge to the computer engineering world through his
website http://www.afu.com "Make Furby re-programmable!" Author of several books on computer programming, including the best-selling
Just Java 2, van der Linden explained his challenge thus: "Being an inveterate gadget lover and tinkerer, I bought one of the first Furbies
available and dismantled it.
The potential for Furby to become a general purpose computing device was immediately obvious. The thing already has a CPU and is
bristling with peripherals including infrared I/O, several motion detectors, eye and mouth movements, a loudspeaker and a microphone. All it
needed was a little encouragement from me to get a great set of Open Source community engineers working on it." If Furby could be
re-programmed by its users, it would become a much more interesting and educational device. Instead of listening to your Furby talk
"Furbish", you could play chess with it. Instead of pressing your Furby's beak, you could have it announce your email or calendar
appointments. You can have Furby record voice memos or phone calls for later replay. You can program Furby to solve mathematical
puzzles and equations, to look for Mersenne prime numbers, or simply to act as a speaking clock. Rework the mouth servo with hydraulics to
open beer cans, have the only speaking garden gnome on the block. Heck, it doesn't really matter, the point is to create individual
conceptual art from mass-produced ephemera.
Furby designer Dave Hampton strongly opposed allowing sophisticated users to customize the device. Hampton had seen earlier toys like Microsoft's "Barney the Talking Dinosaur"
product subverted by graduate students, who put colorful expletives into the mouth of the purple behemoth. The Redmond monopoly provided the software for the talking Barney toy.
Tough Work
Hampton wanted to prevent owners from creating "potty-mouth Furby" and Tiger Electronics (the Furby distributor) wanted to frustrate competitors from copying the design. As a
result, the cpu and memory of each Furby are encased in a tough shell of resin. There is no practical way to break through to examine the electronics without shattering them in the
process. Furby hacking contrasts with the Lego Mindstorms toy, which embraced and co-opted the freelance development community, selling a lot more product in the process. The
active opposition of designer and manufacturer made Furby hacking significantly harder. But the development community views Furby's lack of programmability as a design flaw or
bug, and all bugs (no matter how tough) yield in the end.
"I knew it would be quite difficult to crack Furby security and create a user-programmable version of Furby, so I offered a cash prize as an incentive to try" said van der Linden. Prizes
of this kind were often staked by industrialists in the early days of aviation, to encourage new designs and faster progress.
And The Winner Is...!
The prize of two hundred and fifty dollars was won by Canadian computer consultant Jeffrey Gibbons, who submitted the winning prototype by Fedex. The design is being published
to the public under the terms of the competition, and orders are being taken for a "Hack Furby" kit over the Internet.
"The cash prize is just a token," explained van der Linden, "The real prize is the bragging rights to the accomplishment, and the benefit of sharing it with the world. Computer Science
departments can now base their real-time programming courses on this very low-cost equipment."
One of the first re-programmed Furbies will be sent to the mother who contacted van der Linden early in the challenge. She noticed the speech of her autistic son improved greatly
when interacting with the Furby. But she was despondent about the gibberish that the standard Furby talks. That mother was anxious to find a Furby that could be upgraded with
normal speech, to help autistic children relate to the the real world. Her son's Furby will now be delivered in time for Christmas, thanks to the "Hack Furby Challenge" (subject to kit
production). Parents of autistic children everywhere will value the chance to transform Furby from a trivial amusement into an educational aid.
A Challenge For Software Folks
There is always a higher mountain to climb, and van der Linden plans to issue a new challenge. "Now that the original problem has been solved, I plan
to stake a new prize for the first person to port a Java Virtual Machine to this architecture. The Java 2 Micro Edition is wonderfully suitable for driving
the embedded Furby processor, at the same time allowing programmers to write high-level portable code." The first Furby challenge was for hardware
folks; this new challenge allows software experts to show their skills.
A Java virtual machine has already been ported to the Lego Mindstorms computer. TinyVM is an open source JavaTM based replacement firmware
for the Lego MindstormsTM RCX microcontroller. The RCX is a programmable brick that comes with Lego's Robotics Invention SystemTM. For further
details on the Java/Lego system see http://lejos.sourceforge.net/. If Java can run on a Lego block, it can definitely run on a Furby.
What of the original prototype, the world's first user-programmable Furby? "It's standing on my kitchen table right now, being eyed warily by my dogs"
laughs van der Linden, "I think I'll offer it to the Smithsonian in due course".
Hmm... Then you just undid your moderation:-)
Akk!!! I don't know why I thought I was in the BSD story. Please smack me with a wet trout.
--
>but I would be very surprised if the video is on a PCI card.
>In keeping with Apple tradition it's probably
>soldered right to the mainboard.
That is certianly not the case now. I have
a G4 right next to me and the Rage 128 is
sitting right in the AGP slot. It was really easy for me to check too:-)
Also, don't knock the 128 too badly; it plays Unreal Tournament quite nicely at highest quality. I didn't mess with Quake too much, but it played smoothly too.
>This is nothing like censorship.
Well, you may be right. It may not be censorship by the strictest definition, but these new rules would tell people what they can and cannot do with their domains. If someone says "You can't sell a product from a personal domain," they are banning commercial speech in that sector. Sounds something like censorship to me. If that's not censorship, then what is it?
For instance, say I register a personal web site. I then make some really nice free software that is quite successful. "Yay!" says me. "I'd like to do this for a living. Maybe I can sell support and put in new features for a fee!"
Now, should I be forced to register a new domain so I can sell support for my software? What if all the domains that match my software's name are taken?
I personally don't think strict enforcement of content separation is a good idea. People change, and so do websites. Forcing people to use their domains for specific things seems too much like censorship to me!
Jeremy
>That feature has been implemented for months now.
No, what I want is a slashbox that will only skip the unfunny funnies. I like the funny funnies. Why can't Slashdot get it right?
Not true:-) I said something positive and was marked "Redundant". Now I'll be marked "offtopic":-) Oh well...
First of all, we don't know how old this person is. The "I hate to go to school" phrase could be delibrately misleading.
Second, Microsoft is not completely at fault. Sure, one should take security seriously, but those that actually do the damage are the ones truly at fault. You're saying that if I leave my house unlocked and someone steals my VCR, I'm the culprit. Now, my negligence would mean that I am partially to blame. But that doesn't justify someone stealing my VCR.
Prune Whip
.css files usually contain Cascading Style Sheet code. Just so you know:-)
Prune Whip
>Are there any mainstream distributions that
>include Wine ready-to-run?
I'm using Mandrake 6.1 right now and it came with Wine inluded...
That is true for the Palm IIIe, but the other Palms have flash ROM. Switching to linux should just involve a quick flash.
--
   Now, let me ask you moderators something...
   How can this post be redundant?   It was the first one, so wouldn't the later posts be the redundant ones?   I think some of you are a little trigger happy.   Heaven forbid that a first post might have some merit.
While this may be old hat to some, I doubt I'm the only one to be new to this.
Install was simple; I ran the install script and rebooted. After loading, I was prompted to select a geographic region and a screen resolution. While the color depth was limited to 256, the resolutions went fairly high.
Dialup setup was easy; I entered my DNS address, username, password, and authentication method. I was connected on the first try at 48,800. Don't even bother if you have a win modem.
The 3 plug-ins worked nicely, but the telnet client was the most useful. I was able to check my e-mail and edit files, ect.
The web server worked like a, ahem, charm. Just don't try to
serve and browse at the same time. Browser performance was flaky after
the first hit.
The web browser itself was like an older version of Netscape, but
with fewer features. Data transfer performance was sluggish compared
to other platforms. On the whole, though, the system was usable.
Yahoo, CNet, ZDnet, Deja.com, News.com, and of course Slashdot rendered
nicely.
This seems like something that would be a nice supplement to all
those mini one disk Linux distros out there. Sometimes a portable
GUI browser is nice to have. You guys/gals should give this a try.
Btw, I'm using the Demo to type this review:-)
--
--
   I don't see how others doing bad things makes it OK for Apple to do bad things.    I think Apple's dishonesty with benchmarks is shameful.
   I do agree though, that Apple is good about sticking to public standards.   I guess this is one example of the love/hate response Apple draws.
--
The new iMacs don't have subwoofers built in; that's an extra $100. They do have improved speakers, though I don't know exactly by how much they've improved.
--
The $999 machine comes with 64 meg ram. After seeing the hardware Apple has come out with lately, I have a feeling I'll become a mac convert. I've been working with macs at work, and have really enjoyed the experience.
And, I have to admit that the case stylings are cool. I don't care what all you macho geeky 'computers must be ugly' guys think; a nice package is never a bad thing. So in short, my next computer will most likely be a mac, provided Apple doesn't find some way to kill Linux support on the platform.
Besides all this, just think what this means for non computer literate family members. My mom, for instance, is almost afraid of computers. iMacs are non threatening, fun looking, and compact. Practically, they're great for internet use, come with a very nice works suite, and have the power to handle pretty much anything your average user will want to do. Plus, I'd have to spend less time maintaining the things.
--
In the fall of '98 I had to use TP7 DOS or TP1.5
WIN for my Intro to Programming class. Cost 50 USD:-) TP7 is very fast and elegant. I hope they release it soon.
I had to pick my jaw up as well. AOL is well on it's way to being another Micosoft.
I wonder if they'll mess with winamp's price.
Will they continue to charge a paltry $10 or make it free?