The problem here, is that the FCC intentionally limits the usefulness of Part 15 devices. Sure, you can build yourself a gigantic super-duper gain antenna and a kW amplifier for your signal, but it won't be legal. Did you ever wonder why you don't see access points or PCMCIA cards with convenient BNC or N-type connectors on them? That's because they can't get type approval to sell them if they are 'easily modifyable' by the consumer.
The FCC limits not only power output, but also the gain of the antennas matched with the power output. (ERP) If you have a 1W transmitter and a 12dB antenna attatched to it, your effective radiated power would be 16W, which would not fly under part 15. (I believe the maximum ERP for a part 15 device is something like 1W, and the maximum power output at the device is 100mW) That's not saying a manufacturer couldn't make a superb antenna that was fixed to a tremendous coax run, so that the coax loss was recovered by the antenna.
Basically, the point is, Uncle Sam isn't going to let anything too amazing happen with the tech until he gets some auctioned spectrum money from us. The only thing we can do is work on better reception (pre-amps / low loss coax / DSP) methods, or get a license to operate under a different part.
Actually, you could look at these viruses as more of a protocol than a virus. When the other user initiates the connection, you can simply send a series of 'response' packets to verify that you received the request for a connection. If their computer doesn't know how to handle the 'response' and does something silly like crash, well, that just means they need to update the driver they have for that 'protocol' I mean, the guy who wrote that version they are running now must have been crazy! Its practically a virus!
American Heritage (6 hours): [boring information] NOTE: Not required for engineering majors.
I don't mind seeing this at all, because yeah, we don't want to spend any more time than we have to there, and we know what we need to focus on. What I REALLY hate is when I see that a course cannot be taken by anyone in certain degree programs. For instance, I had all the CompSci pre-req's for several classes I wished to take, but wasn't even allowed to register for them as free electives because I was in the Electrical/Computer Engineering department...
Then throw in a couple of business classes that I felt could be major resume material for getting into the big 3 companies (dealing with organized labor, etc.) which I wasn't allowed to take, regardless of the fact that all pre-req's were also required for my degree....
Arrrgh...
I haven't been this ticked off in a while, why'd you guys have to remind me!
Jill Crisman, an electrical and computer engineer who left a faculty post at Northeastern University to join Olin's faculty, agrees. "Almost everything I learned well came because I was doing something."
AMEN!
If there is anything that I can stress about my undergraduate career, its that there was very little hands on stuff, and what little I was exposed to was absolutely worthless to my current career (BSEE Controls Engineer)
When I got to college, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to program PLC's and robotics to make nifty cars. I understand that I'm going to have to wade through alot of other stuff- humanitites, other related fields, etc. before I get to the good stuff, but we just never got to the good stuff. Where did I learn that? On my own, with other frustrated engineering students that set up "special interest organizations" to explore and experiment on our own time. I honestly think I'd be a better engineer if I just moved onto campus, never took any classes, and just got involved in a bunch of technical "special interest" groups.
Turns out, through these special interest groups I met alot of people in other programs (even those 2 and 4 year "technical" programs that employers seem to avoid like the plague because they aren't *real* engineers) and found out something quite devastating. I was wasting my money going to the University, I should have been going to the technical school to actually *learn* stuff. I was just learning how to learn stuff.
Now that I'm out in the field, a real engineer- I can honestly say that if I want to hire someone who I know will hit the ground running right out of school, be adaptable, and actually have some familiarity with the technology used in industry, I'm gonna stay clear of the EE's and jump at the EET's.....
Re:If we are going to go ballistic...
on
Gone Fission
·
· Score: 1
I have the same problems in Ohio. It should be pretty obvious just looking at their digital cable commercials:
Claim 1: No extra fee for extra TV's
Truth 1: Additional 'complex installation fee' as well as a monthly fee for use of the set top boxl
Claim 2: 24 Hour Local Customer Service
There's a local office, but they are open during regular business hours, one day a week, one week a month, one year a millenia. I usually got somebody with an accent so think I can barely hear through it.
Claim 3:Always on... Yeah, sure...
Well, I switched to DSL, and don't have many complaints so far with the exception of the lousy linux support: "What's My Username" "You use linux, we can't help you:
Computer monitors set at a 60Hz refresh, dying
Interesting. I was always one of the few people I knew who could hear when something electrical was on the fritz, but I've never noticed anything with monitors other than the ever constant 'whine' any CRT makes. I would imagine that the 60Hz refresh rate isn't what you're hearing, but the corresponding horizontal refresh rate that goes with it. That would be a higher frequency. After accidently applying 60Hz AC to a few items, anything about that frequency just makes my skin crawl. Haven't heard it out of a monitor yet...
Actually, if you've ever had a mosquito buzzing around your head for an extended period of time, (I'm not sure if it was male or female, I tend to use lethal force on these creatures without lifting up its leg to check its gender) you would find that not only is the sound audible, but it isn't really near the top of our range either.
Oh yes, Ohio is the perfect setting for WiFi... It's just so flat, very few trees (ok, stereotyping a little bit, but its darn accurate in my part of the state) and an overall population density that makes 100% cellular coverage a must.
The result? A great gridwork of towers in the air, wherever you stand. (I can see 3 right now out my office window!) Some very small ISPs are putting in broadband (1.5Mb guaranteed) wireless service in rural counties. I was amazed to see what a friends permanant installation could do from 10 miles out. He spend maybe $100 on all brand new equip from the ISP and was getting near maximum speeds. Line of sight is a beautiful thing when you're surrounded by soybean fields.
My personal experience has been quite pleasing as well. I'm happy to host the occasional passerby on my net for a day, being the WiFi is completely encased by firewalls (one to keep them away from my systems, one to keep my acceptable use policy intact. I don't want any spamming or massive hacking going on) and I appreciate when I can find a web interface here and there on the road. I look at it this way- its a resource like a well. Just as long as they don't drink too much, piss in it, or try and come into the house (network) I'd have no problem letting a thirsty stranger stop for a drink.
The spectrum issues are already working themselves out. I can run my microwave, talk on my 2.4Ghz phone, and surf the net all at the same time without any noticable signal loss. And baby monitors? Come on, how many times have you seen modern consumer electronics cause trouble for more than a few meters?
I saw MTU and I thought for sure I was going to see a post related to the infamous CH102 Forks in a pickle + 120V 'experiments' !!!
Unfortunately, I can't help with the lyrics, but if you wanna 'cook' some pickles in a dark room, it can be a very neon-like experience. Try some different chemicals to pickle the cucumber, and you can get some other colors.
I mean, I can take ugly, but this is like- circus ugly!
Unless there's a flying saucer passing by, don't expect this to ever become more than a radio beacon.
Hey, how do you know that we aren't just in a very small "no-fly" zone created to isolate us, a primitive planet, from all that life out there. Maybe we can't hear them only because they don't want us to. We're not ready for that revalation and they know it.
What I want to know is, why does the plaque showing humanity in all its naked glory have the man waving hello? How are aliens supposed to interpret this? For all we know that could be the intergalactic symbol for 'come and eat my species, we taste really yummy'...
Certain NASA officials of old have been indicted by a federal grand jury on one count of 'distributing pornography to beings of indeterminate age or species.'
Maybe we should have put a sign on the door that says: "You must be 18 years of age to proceed, if not go back!" :P
Yes, it does. You'd think it wouldn't - you can tell whether you're spinning or not without any reference to the rest of the universe by the forces on your body (central forces required to keep you from flying apart).
Actually, you can't detect your relative rotation- as long as the speed is constant. This is why the occasional non-instrument rated pilot goes into a death spiral. With no visual references, the fluids in your ears that detect motion will eventually stabilize in a constant speed turn (rotation) and ending the turn actually makes you feel like you are turning in the opposite direction and climbing.
Neat experiment - Sit blindfolded in a chair, lean your head to one side and forward as much as comfortable, and have a friend spin the chair at a constant speed for 60 seconds. Then suddenly stop the chair and try and sit up straight.
It's not as easy as it sounds, even for those of us with excellent balance.
But then again, if you do it... WHERE is the next step up? WHAT can you possibly do to get another adrenaline release that does not make you feel like yawning ?
I don't know if I'm just unconventional here, but I always thought that parachuting from an extremely *small* altitude would be more nerveracking. At least more so than a 20 minute free fall.
IPv6 will definitely help. It will, we hope, bring users' systems out into the open, eliminating the current Network Address Translation system that hides the users.
I think that if there is anything that will make users systems less obscurely identified on a network, it will *not* be IPv6. With the power that the general public will have over IP addresses, NAT may be only slightly less useful, and IP's will change so frequently that nobody will be able to figure out where the 'ghost host' went. I for one, prefer the miniscule amount of obscurity my wireless NAT'd connection provides me when browsing.
Try setting up a machine that's completely open to cookies and the like, but only use it to occasionally browse the type of sites you normally wouldn't- say Pokemon and Barney sites. Just watch the spam and pop-ups accumulate relative to those subjects. Nah, I'd rather not "log in automatically" or "save your username and password" - disable all those people tracking devices, and change IP's / MACs on a regular basis.
Retrieval, though, can be essentially arbitrarily slow
Oh, so your looking for a storage medium with infinite space but slow retrieval time?
Easy. Free-Space Medium.
Just use an extremely high gain antenna, a ton of power, and the space around us. Transmit the compressed data stream, aimed at a distant planetary body of your choosing. I would reccomend something in the 100 light year range or so. Now, when the waves hit the body and are reflected back to earth, you will have what is essentially a 100 light year long piece of storage.
And when the waves get back to earth, the technology for terrestrial storage will be extremely inexpensive, and the reception equipment will be too.
And I thought this was going to finally be the rating system that makes sense. If you really want a totally voluntary system, you should just add a tag:
<rated=E>I don't like you,</rated=E><rated=MA> you pig$*$# SOB.. </rated=MA>
Then the browsers could be set to not show any page with content worse than a certain rating, or they could just blank out those portions of the text above the rating. A nice little system that wouldn't require any special software other than a web browser that supports it.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem here, is that the FCC intentionally limits the usefulness of Part 15 devices. Sure, you can build yourself a gigantic super-duper gain antenna and a kW amplifier for your signal, but it won't be legal. Did you ever wonder why you don't see access points or PCMCIA cards with convenient BNC or N-type connectors on them? That's because they can't get type approval to sell them if they are 'easily modifyable' by the consumer.
The FCC limits not only power output, but also the gain of the antennas matched with the power output. (ERP) If you have a 1W transmitter and a 12dB antenna attatched to it, your effective radiated power would be 16W, which would not fly under part 15. (I believe the maximum ERP for a part 15 device is something like 1W, and the maximum power output at the device is 100mW) That's not saying a manufacturer couldn't make a superb antenna that was fixed to a tremendous coax run, so that the coax loss was recovered by the antenna.
Basically, the point is, Uncle Sam isn't going to let anything too amazing happen with the tech until he gets some auctioned spectrum money from us. The only thing we can do is work on better reception (pre-amps / low loss coax / DSP) methods, or get a license to operate under a different part.
Actually, you could look at these viruses as more of a protocol than a virus. When the other user initiates the connection, you can simply send a series of 'response' packets to verify that you received the request for a connection. If their computer doesn't know how to handle the 'response' and does something silly like crash, well, that just means they need to update the driver they have for that 'protocol' I mean, the guy who wrote that version they are running now must have been crazy! Its practically a virus!
Don't fix it, dangit!!!!
crap with miserably translated confusing manuals
Yes, I sympathize. Just last night I was putting together my new bike. And the final instruction was translated as "All your base are belong to us!"
Is it bad that the phrase doesn't even sound like a bad translation anymore?
I mean come on... We've been nuking win95 machines since '96... It's time to find a new protocol!
(7) Reffering their customers pirates and thieves.
Hey, just because the search feature on slashdot doesn't recognize two letter words doesn't mean you don't have to......
(7) Reffering to their customers as pirates and thieves.
I am not a dang "grammatical error junkie" ! I just put 2 and 2 together.....
American Heritage (6 hours): [boring information] NOTE: Not required for engineering majors.
I don't mind seeing this at all, because yeah, we don't want to spend any more time than we have to there, and we know what we need to focus on. What I REALLY hate is when I see that a course cannot be taken by anyone in certain degree programs. For instance, I had all the CompSci pre-req's for several classes I wished to take, but wasn't even allowed to register for them as free electives because I was in the Electrical/Computer Engineering department...
Then throw in a couple of business classes that I felt could be major resume material for getting into the big 3 companies (dealing with organized labor, etc.) which I wasn't allowed to take, regardless of the fact that all pre-req's were also required for my degree....
Arrrgh...
I haven't been this ticked off in a while, why'd you guys have to remind me!
Jill Crisman, an electrical and computer engineer who left a faculty post at Northeastern University to join Olin's faculty, agrees. "Almost everything I learned well came because I was doing something."
AMEN!
If there is anything that I can stress about my undergraduate career, its that there was very little hands on stuff, and what little I was exposed to was absolutely worthless to my current career (BSEE Controls Engineer)
When I got to college, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to program PLC's and robotics to make nifty cars. I understand that I'm going to have to wade through alot of other stuff- humanitites, other related fields, etc. before I get to the good stuff, but we just never got to the good stuff. Where did I learn that? On my own, with other frustrated engineering students that set up "special interest organizations" to explore and experiment on our own time. I honestly think I'd be a better engineer if I just moved onto campus, never took any classes, and just got involved in a bunch of technical "special interest" groups.
Turns out, through these special interest groups I met alot of people in other programs (even those 2 and 4 year "technical" programs that employers seem to avoid like the plague because they aren't *real* engineers) and found out something quite devastating. I was wasting my money going to the University, I should have been going to the technical school to actually *learn* stuff. I was just learning how to learn stuff.
Now that I'm out in the field, a real engineer- I can honestly say that if I want to hire someone who I know will hit the ground running right out of school, be adaptable, and actually have some familiarity with the technology used in industry, I'm gonna stay clear of the EE's and jump at the EET's.....
Maryland... What a nice state...
For me to poop on!
I have the same problems in Ohio. It should be pretty obvious just looking at their digital cable commercials:
Claim 1: No extra fee for extra TV's
Truth 1: Additional 'complex installation fee' as well as a monthly fee for use of the set top boxl
Claim 2: 24 Hour Local Customer Service
There's a local office, but they are open during regular business hours, one day a week, one week a month, one year a millenia. I usually got somebody with an accent so think I can barely hear through it.
Claim 3:Always on...
Yeah, sure...
Well, I switched to DSL, and don't have many complaints so far with the exception of the lousy linux support: "What's My Username" "You use linux, we can't help you:
AHA!
I don't know about the supreme court, but I know that in Ohio where the spammer lives, we have 9 legally retarded persons on death row!
Maybe this guy shot himself in the foot by choosing to live in the 'ol Buckeye state....
Computer monitors set at a 60Hz refresh, dying
Interesting. I was always one of the few people I knew who could hear when something electrical was on the fritz, but I've never noticed anything with monitors other than the ever constant 'whine' any CRT makes. I would imagine that the 60Hz refresh rate isn't what you're hearing, but the corresponding horizontal refresh rate that goes with it. That would be a higher frequency. After accidently applying 60Hz AC to a few items, anything about that frequency just makes my skin crawl. Haven't heard it out of a monitor yet...
Actually, if you've ever had a mosquito buzzing around your head for an extended period of time, (I'm not sure if it was male or female, I tend to use lethal force on these creatures without lifting up its leg to check its gender) you would find that not only is the sound audible, but it isn't really near the top of our range either.
Oh yes, Ohio is the perfect setting for WiFi... It's just so flat, very few trees (ok, stereotyping a little bit, but its darn accurate in my part of the state) and an overall population density that makes 100% cellular coverage a must.
The result? A great gridwork of towers in the air, wherever you stand. (I can see 3 right now out my office window!) Some very small ISPs are putting in broadband (1.5Mb guaranteed) wireless service in rural counties. I was amazed to see what a friends permanant installation could do from 10 miles out. He spend maybe $100 on all brand new equip from the ISP and was getting near maximum speeds. Line of sight is a beautiful thing when you're surrounded by soybean fields.
My personal experience has been quite pleasing as well. I'm happy to host the occasional passerby on my net for a day, being the WiFi is completely encased by firewalls (one to keep them away from my systems, one to keep my acceptable use policy intact. I don't want any spamming or massive hacking going on) and I appreciate when I can find a web interface here and there on the road. I look at it this way- its a resource like a well. Just as long as they don't drink too much, piss in it, or try and come into the house (network) I'd have no problem letting a thirsty stranger stop for a drink.
The spectrum issues are already working themselves out. I can run my microwave, talk on my 2.4Ghz phone, and surf the net all at the same time without any noticable signal loss. And baby monitors? Come on, how many times have you seen modern consumer electronics cause trouble for more than a few meters?
I saw MTU and I thought for sure I was going to see a post related to the infamous CH102 Forks in a pickle + 120V 'experiments' !!!
Unfortunately, I can't help with the lyrics, but if you wanna 'cook' some pickles in a dark room, it can be a very neon-like experience. Try some different chemicals to pickle the cucumber, and you can get some other colors.
I mean, I can take ugly, but this is like- circus ugly!
Unless there's a flying saucer passing by, don't expect this to ever become more than a radio beacon.
Hey, how do you know that we aren't just in a very small "no-fly" zone created to isolate us, a primitive planet, from all that life out there. Maybe we can't hear them only because they don't want us to. We're not ready for that revalation and they know it.
What I want to know is, why does the plaque showing humanity in all its naked glory have the man waving hello? How are aliens supposed to interpret this? For all we know that could be the intergalactic symbol for 'come and eat my species, we taste really yummy'...
:P
Certain NASA officials of old have been indicted by a federal grand jury on one count of 'distributing pornography to beings of indeterminate age or species.'
Maybe we should have put a sign on the door that says: "You must be 18 years of age to proceed, if not go back!"
If the bot answers are roughly the same as Dr. Wallace's - Does that mean he is lazy, or a success?
Talk about a slashdot effect.....
Yes, it does. You'd think it wouldn't - you can tell whether you're spinning or not without any reference to the rest of the universe by the forces on your body (central forces required to keep you from flying apart).
Actually, you can't detect your relative rotation- as long as the speed is constant. This is why the occasional non-instrument rated pilot goes into a death spiral. With no visual references, the fluids in your ears that detect motion will eventually stabilize in a constant speed turn (rotation) and ending the turn actually makes you feel like you are turning in the opposite direction and climbing.
Neat experiment - Sit blindfolded in a chair, lean your head to one side and forward as much as comfortable, and have a friend spin the chair at a constant speed for 60 seconds. Then suddenly stop the chair and try and sit up straight.
It's not as easy as it sounds, even for those of us with excellent balance.
But then again, if you do it... WHERE is the next step up? WHAT can you possibly do to get another adrenaline release that does not make you feel like yawning ?
I don't know if I'm just unconventional here, but I always thought that parachuting from an extremely *small* altitude would be more nerveracking. At least more so than a 20 minute free fall.
IPv6 will definitely help. It will, we hope, bring users' systems out into the open, eliminating the current Network Address Translation system that hides the users.
I think that if there is anything that will make users systems less obscurely identified on a network, it will *not* be IPv6. With the power that the general public will have over IP addresses, NAT may be only slightly less useful, and IP's will change so frequently that nobody will be able to figure out where the 'ghost host' went. I for one, prefer the miniscule amount of obscurity my wireless NAT'd connection provides me when browsing.
Try setting up a machine that's completely open to cookies and the like, but only use it to occasionally browse the type of sites you normally wouldn't- say Pokemon and Barney sites. Just watch the spam and pop-ups accumulate relative to those subjects. Nah, I'd rather not "log in automatically" or "save your username and password" - disable all those people tracking devices, and change IP's / MACs on a regular basis.
tsk tsk...
100 years to get there, 100 years to get back.... Plus a few microseconds for atmospheric slowing of the speed of light.
Hmm.... If we can reduce the speed of light by not sending it through a vacuum, maybe we can increase it by finding a better medium...
and you have to store it indefinitely.
Retrieval, though, can be essentially arbitrarily slow
Oh, so your looking for a storage medium with infinite space but slow retrieval time?
Easy. Free-Space Medium.
Just use an extremely high gain antenna, a ton of power, and the space around us. Transmit the compressed data stream, aimed at a distant planetary body of your choosing. I would reccomend something in the 100 light year range or so. Now, when the waves hit the body and are reflected back to earth, you will have what is essentially a 100 light year long piece of storage.
And when the waves get back to earth, the technology for terrestrial storage will be extremely inexpensive, and the reception equipment will be too.
DG: What has Microsoft learned from its antitrust experiences?
TBL: I can't answer that one.
Let me try:
1. They are above the law.
2. There are so many more opportunities to use their monopoly against the best wishes of consumers.
3. Bad software doesn't really hurt their ability to leverage their monopoly.
If their is any hope out there, we need to educate the general public in concern to the evils of Passport and single software browsing.
We are just preaching to the choir here.
And I thought this was going to finally be the rating system that makes sense. If you really want a totally voluntary system, you should just add a tag:
<rated=E>I don't like you,</rated=E><rated=MA> you pig$*$# SOB.. </rated=MA>
Then the browsers could be set to not show any page with content worse than a certain rating, or they could just blank out those portions of the text above the rating. A nice little system that wouldn't require any special software other than a web browser that supports it.