Actually, the rules for solar races almost always place a limit on the $/watt for the cells, so that competitors can't "buy" the win. (there are some much more efficient solar cells out there, but their cost is insanely high) This forces entrants to work on "the big picture", including vehicle weight, aerodynamics, electronics efficiency, and even their strategy. Many solar competitions allow one battery swap-out during the course of the run, and teams have to decide when the best time for this is, in addition to how hard to push the pedal when power's running low.
Consider doing some GeoCaching. After you've picked your travel route, check the caching web pages to find caches located along your route, there'll be plenty of them. They're usually located in parks and other public areas, and the cachers usually place them at locations that have a scenic or other special value for having found the location. It's a bit like hide-and-seek, and all you need is a GPS. It'd be interesting to see a string of GC sign-in's running across the USA by someone.
I've got one of the "first run" Apex 2600's, and it has RGB composite outputs, as well as that wonderful "you should not be here" hidden menu that got it pulled off the shelves just after mine came home with me. (can turn off microvision and set region to everyone's favorite: "bypass") The only issue with this one is it has coaxial digital audio out, and it wasn't exactly trivial to find a receiver that had a coaxial digital audio-in port.
If I recall correctly, the digital streams have a "do not copy" flag they send with the encoded video stream, and end units in the digital chain will flip you the bird if you try to record such a digital stream with them. All part of the RIAA's coveted chain of trust system. If you want their decryption keys for the digital stream to make your digital video appliance, you have to sign a contract that promises you'll take away all your customer's fair-use rights.
Why doesn't apple make...
on
Pods Unite
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· Score: 4, Interesting
a car stereo that has a "docking bay" slot in it where you can just plug in your iPod? That would be ideal, just stuff it into the dash to play your tunes in the vehicle, while charging the iPod, then take the iPod with you when you go. No need to pull the stereo out of the dash to load new music onto it either. And having an important component removable should make it less prone to theft also, as the MP3 stereos seem to be very high risk right now.
Following the links, Kensington doesn't list an MSRP or sell it directly, but the other links indicated the "going rate" for the toy is $22.00, and I think that's well within budget for a computer toy.
It could really use an external antenna though. If it had this, (or if the unit itself exhibited some amount of directional reception?) then it would be much more useful to find the actual location (down to say, which building on the storefront) the hotspot was at. The closer bench gets the better connectivity!
Maybe someone will post a hack shortly that shows how to jurry-rig an antenna port on the little bugger. I'd also like to "me too" a previous post that suggested an external power connection. Just keep the puppy sitting on your dash whilst driving around town until the green lights start climbing up.
Was anyone able to spot where these could be bought at? (this really looks like something ThinkGeek would carry)
Mplayer also works very well with AVI files. It gives you a little more control over the playback, but doesn't play VOBs or OGM files, so I keep both on-hand and use whichever works best.
My comps have always had good onboard sound. I never understood why anyone would make a motherboard without it in the first place. I realize some of today's really high quality sound cards have some things you just wouldn't find on a built-on, but there's really no excuse for lack of at least basic audio support.
It's worth noting that while OS X is not/free/, it is CHEAP. Consider this... most people don't know, but if you read the fine print, an OS X license is good for FIVE MACHINES. This means you can buy one copy and install it on up to five puters at your house, and stay legal. That works out to $26 each. It's not free, but they are certainly trying to help you out here. And most people that would make that complaint are linux users, (since Windows doesn't offer that deal!) and I have yet to meet a linux user that owns fewer than 3 computers. Deal!
>Most movies aren't worth watching more than once anyway.
That's an opinion though. I, for example, have a large CD wallet full of my purchased DVDs, and over 90% of them have been watched many many times. There's a big business in purchased CDs. I see this as a way to get a $28.00 DVD for more like $5.00, and I have to admit it would be quite tempting.
I wonder how they would attempt to make this illegal? License the movie to me? Probably. Since otherwise, if I've actually -bought- it and -own- the copy, I can do whatever I want with it, including defeating the expiration system.
Off-topic: I hate licensing. It gives the owner (?) too much control. What's next? Licensed computer hardware? Licensing should be abolished.
Lexan is not gas-permeable. So if there is something that's taking down the disc by exposure to something in the atmosphere, it can't be sanwiched in the middle of the disc. So it's either (A) eating away the media layer (top, just under the label) or it's reacting with something on the underside to block the read laser. I'm going to assume it's not attacking the data layer because of the difficulty in getting exposure past the label that covers the data layer.
If we then assume it's on the bottom, then what's to stop me from buying a $25 CD polisher kit from my local music store, and buff off that clouded layer? Forget ripping, I'll just keep the DVDs and play them as much as I like.
And then how long will it be before the RIAA moves to get CD scratch removers banned under the DMCA?
Everyone loved Bugs Bunny and Road Runner. All the rest of the Warner Brothers characters had speeth impedimenths but we loved them anyway. "Oh, that makes me so aaaaaangry!"
Kids' shows featured casts of kids doing silly things. Nobody remembers what, but we all remember enjoying it just the same. Nobody ever figured out how to talk like the kids on Zoom did. We remember the other more useful things instead... Box 350, Boston Mass, oh-two-one-three-four.
Why can't my self-addressed, stamped envelope get me that fan stuff back the next day? ACME always gets the Coyote's packages delivered in seconds. Anyone that says today's television is more violent than it used to be has never seen what happens to the Coyote several times in any five minute stretch. I bet he's got a lot of 'frequent flier' miles built up, mostly vertical, down to be specific.
Popeye was cool, but never did persuade me to try spinish. Mickey Mouse and crew were probably the ideal cartoon, leaving out the violence and still keeping us smiling. Donald Duck had all sorts of issues. Taz wasn't cool yet.
We remember all those silly repititious cartoons that we never got tired of watching. Scooby Do, Space Ghost, Super Friends. I was always in awe at how the Mystery Machine crew spotted minor details I missed, detailed later in the show in a flashback... only later with repeats did I notice that they cheated us by not actually showing the minor detail in the earlier part of the show.
While I certainly don't blame any psychotic behavior on Road Runner, I would pose a few questions about how cartoons may have affected us. How many kids tried dog biscuits after watching Shaggy on Scooby Do? How many kids expected more of the Post Office after watching Wiley Coyote? How many of us thought you couldn't fall unless you made the mistake of looking down?
It's a shame these are very rare to see now on Saturday morning. Closest thing I've seen recently would be Animaniacs - characters being silly for sillyness' sake. Isn't that what being a kid is all about?
I know, I know, it's the handyman's secret weapon, but it's really not necessary. I had a dust problem in my basement where my servers hide, and I cured the problem cheaply and easily, no duct tape required.
Get a cheapo box fan, $15-20 at your local wal-mart/k-mart/s-mart store. (shop smart, shop s-mart!) While you're there, look at the furnace filters. Buy the cheapest they have. Stick the fan where you need it, turn it on high, and set the filter on the intake side. Suction will hold it on. You can ignore the gaps around the sides, they really don't require sealing up, although I actually had to go find a little bit of scrap to lean against the filter because it falls off if the power fails. (unless you're puting your fan on the UPS...)
The filter works fine to remove dust, lint, hair, and other sorts of airborn junk. Zero hassel to change the filters, and they're cheap. (under a buck each, usually) Mine require changing about every 2 months. You might want to experiment a bit on fan placement... it's important to find the best spot where airflow is optimal. If you run an AC unit in the room, this will also help cut down on how often you have to clean its intake filter.
I like the Endust idea someone else posted, I'll have to try that. Good advice also to keep the equipment off the floor, setting your box on the floor is the fastest way to fill the case with dust bunnies and sieze up your fan.
I looked at the specs for Bittorrent (thanks to the author who provides full specs!) and from that and what I saw when downloading Animatrix, it's easy to see what happens.
The system is designed to talk with other peers trying to download the same torrent file, and checks around to establish a list of best (fastest) providers. He's got a lot of nice adjustments in the protocol to favor swapping of parts too, which is a nice touch. (I'll give you block 25 if you give me block 18)
If the mesh has enough people that have already downloaded some blocks, (should happen almost immediately?) then the host basically does nothing besides help hook new downloaders into the mesh. This is why the host doesn't get/.'d at the start. (I'm assuming each BT client tries to download segments in random order)
As for the client's view of things... I was quite impressed with Bittorrent's ability to saturate my line as soon as it got moving. (it took a couple minutes to get its bearings in the mesh before it started) Once it was on its feet, it had my 768kbit line doing a solid 80+k/sec download. Very nice.
NOTE, there is a penalty. Iirc, Bittorrent forms up to 20 connections (download) at a time. This effect was very apparent in that two other file transfers that I had going at the time got the rug pulled out from under them. Instead of my "three" downloads getting an even split at say 25,25,25 k/sec, it was more like 80,3,2 k/sec. Bittorrent's use of many pipes, combined with the network and OS "sharing" the bandwidth between the pipes (instead of the applications) caused some nasty starvation on my other non-BT downloads.
Overall, I like it. I wish more big things were available via BT. I left Animatrix up for about six hours after it completed, and the mesh was only drawing between 0-4 k/sec from me during that time. Surely a fair trade! The author has a paypal link at his site, think about tossing him a couple bucks and lets see this evolve even farther.
We've always known M$'s main skill was not in innovation, but rather in buying/borrowing technology and trying to grow it. At least now they're trying to do it in a slightly more honest and upfront way and actually pay for it before they take it.
What is the most effective thing Joe Q. Public can do to fight DRM? There are all sorts of organizations with various methods, including petitions, boycotts, information-sharing, etc., and the ever popular "write your senator" form letters. This seems like a case of David vs Goliath, and I'd like to know what stone would be best to pick up.
I don't know much about the laws regaurding fraud and other illegal activities done "through" a foreign country. I was under the impression that it was still prossicutable to "launder" money by way of an out-of-country bank account. Is there any reason why relaying spam or running a spam engine from offshore would be legal for a US resident?
Apple had a great relationship with Adobe, and had them at I don't know how many keynotes to tout how well Adobe worked with (name any model of apple) and that worked out well for both Apple and Adobe. But now, Apple is designing a lot of free or low-cost software that is in direct competition with Adobe's products. I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe hadn't already discussed this announcement with Apple as a sort of a "quit shoving us out of the market, or we are going to stop committing to it."
Apple is playing with a double-edged sword here. Consumers like to have free software bundled with their computer, but its presence makes it more difficult for software producers to find a proffitable niche in the market, and ultimately results in a decline of available software. This hurts the consumer it was intended to benefit, and ultimately the strategy backfires on the computer/OS vendor that supplied the free software in the first place.
Case in point: how many web browsers do you see for sale nowadays? That market is no longer economically viable for any software publisher. I remember when Netscape was a pay product, with a "free for educational or home use" license, but I somehow doubt they made any money on it.
In some ways, Apple's strategies are just as harmful as Microsoft's. M$ has its wonderful "embrace and expand" tactic they use to hijack new technology, but Apple just plain embraces and gives away for free, which have the same result - lowering the viability of a software niche. In that respect, Apple's producing the operating system AND software titles is just as harmful as with Microsoft doing it. (who are often criticized and periodically endited as a result)
Don't forget... the desalinization process also produces salt. Dump that back into the ocean and you jack the salt concentration up far enough to kill well, most everything in the area of the plant. Dumping it on land is no better, it's essentially poison to plants. It's also not very clean, because it's mixed in with all the other various things found in seawater, inlcuding waste, debris, dead plankton, stray fish, etc., so I don't know how good of a candidate it would be for use as a salt resource.
There are also basic maintenance issues. Barnicles love places where lots of water flows by, and they can cement themselves to nearly anything. I wonder if they have plans on how to clean out the inside of that pipe periodically?
What I will be telling them tomorrow morning when I call:
"When I am looking for computer hardware, I usually drive to the store I believe will have what I want, or at least offer me a good selection to pick from. I've bought a wide range of products from your store, including CD blanks, cables, optic mice, a computer chair, and even a digital camera. I see no reason to visit your store if you are deliberately cutting your selection down to what a single software company believes is the right hardware for me. So long as that silly 'Micro$oft-approved products only' rule is in effect at your stores, don't expect to see me or my wallet there."
Just lift the keyboard up on the tibook and you'll see five heat pipes running away from the processor heat sink. They go to various parts of the computer, and usually end bonded to a metal plate with holes in it, to dissipate the heat. I don't know if these are the same type of heat pipe the original poster is describing, but they serve the same purpose.
My previous powerbook, a 1998 "wallstreet", had no heat pipes, but used the keyboard to dissipate CPU heat. The back side of the keyboard was aluminum, and sat squarely on top of the CPU heat spreader. It made for a nice warm toasty feeling on the fingers while gaming with it in the winter.:-) That was a really good idea.
The problem the powerbooks have with heat seems to be the video... people always seem to forget that heat source in laptops. In both the ti and the wallstreet, that heats up the BOTTOM of the computer. I wouldn't even think of playing UT with the computer on my lap. The wallstreet had an interesting design on the bottom in that the sides where your legs would be were plastic - the center was the aluminum heat plate, and if you set it on your lap with your legs spread properly, you were free of any heat issues. Another excellent design idea not included in the new TiBooks.:(
I don't see a serious heat issue for most powerbook users. I'm sitting here typing up this post and I have, on average, one of the 19 bars lit up on my CPU monitor. The bottom of the tibook is only pleasantly warm to the touch, certainly not hot by anyone's opinion. I don't have any of the "power cycling" features turned on either... I'm sure it'd run even cooler if I enabled those. Now if I started ripping MP3s and compiling, the processor would get busy and the fan would spin up and she'd get warm.
How do PC laptops handle various workloads? I've used a few awhile back and they all seemed to be just as hot no matter if you were or weren't doing anything with them. I also noticed that if you pluged them into AC power, they'd crank up their CPU speed and get a lot warmer.
I'd love to work on something like this, but I don't have the money so all I can do is "armchair quarterback" it. Assuming money was no object, and I had access to all the fun toys that are currently available....
- Vision: synthetic aperature radar. This would be the ideal way to detect potholes, judge distance and height, etc. Very expensive stuff, unfortunately. Also include forward-looking color camera to read signs etc.
- Processing: one poster suggested "divide and conquer", which would probably be the best approach. Feed the world data from the radar/camera into multiple systems, each for dealing with a different problem. Here's what you'd have to be able to deal with:
1. identifying road positions. Not too hard to do, just look for the center line and shoulder.
2. identify unpaved road paths. (gravel and dirt) More complicated.
3. Identify road hazards.
4. Process road signs. (speed limit in particular)
5. Navigation during maneuvers. (merging, turning, changing road types, stopping, pulling over and pulling out)
6. several smaller algorythms to detect uncommon but possible conditions, such as encountering a slow moving vehicle, cattle on the road, being passed by another vehicle, identification of blocked roads (construction, bridge out, detour) and so forth. Each of these would have to be handled as an interrupting action.
A GPS will no doubt be essential to any design.
A fully loaded map system would have to be in the mix as well. Think MapQuest or something like that. It would need the ability to plot a sensible course from any two given points.
Navigation would combine all of these elements. Use of the GPS and the road detectors would keep the "bot" on course. Road hazard system would interrupt to deal with dynamic situations and general vehicle safety. In the event of a road hazard, it would probably be smartest to simply mark that bit of the road as "no longer there" and calculate a new route. Better to turn around and detour to go around a tumbleweed in the road than to try to run it over.
Speed determination would require some thought. Road conditions, weather, terrain roughness, speed limit, would all have to be factored in.
Dealing with various traffic controls would be necessary. Stop signs, speed limit changes, etc would be not challenge too much.
Uncontrolled intersections would be a pain, and might require the radar/camera to be able to swivel around to "look both ways before crossing" etc.
Off-road conditions would be especially difficult. Obstacles would be difficult to quantify. (just how much do we need to slow down for that pothole?) This is why the radar would be so important... stereo vision is too easily confused by shadows and other factors, and if you're trucking along at 40mph you have to know if that's a shadow or a hole or a small boulder.
It would probably be a good idea to have some reasonable additions made for general vehicle monitoring. Gas, temp, oil pressure, interior temp, spedometer, tach all would need to provide feedback to the system. It would be a good idea to have a way to detect a flat tire, but I can't think offhand of a good way to do that, especially considering the possibility of needing to cross rough terrain.
Hopefully they would allow some reasonable safety controls. I'd like to see a live camera feed to monitor progress, and a set of like three kill buttons that can transmit emergency overrides in the event of malfunction. One to trigger an orderly "pull over and stop", one to do an emergency stop (hard brake and kill engine) and one to "kill engine and immediately shut down".
Lastly, an "overseer" would be a very wise thing to include. A small computer running on independent power with interrupt control over the steering, throttle, brake, and ignition. It's only job would be to monitor the navigation system for faults. If navigation goes out, the overseer would quickly but safely stop the vehicle, and attempt to restart the navigation. (reboot) If this fails, it would stop the ignition and trigger a distress beacon.
I recall seeing an article awhile ago where companies were buying defective memory, and running them in these external testing units,which would identify which chip(s) on the stick were bad. I'm assuming they'd then unsolder the bad chip and recover one from another module. At that time some of those sticks had 8 chips on each side, so you could recover 15 good sticks from 16 bad ones. Considering the price of memory a few yrs ago, it was probably a worthwhile venture. Nowadays though, it's probably not worth anyone's time.
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Actually, the rules for solar races almost always place a limit on the $/watt for the cells, so that competitors can't "buy" the win. (there are some much more efficient solar cells out there, but their cost is insanely high) This forces entrants to work on "the big picture", including vehicle weight, aerodynamics, electronics efficiency, and even their strategy. Many solar competitions allow one battery swap-out during the course of the run, and teams have to decide when the best time for this is, in addition to how hard to push the pedal when power's running low.
Isn't that basically what SCO is doing with *nix right now? Offering the opportunity to license the tech as though they've already won in court?
Consider doing some GeoCaching. After you've picked your travel route, check the caching web pages to find caches located along your route, there'll be plenty of them. They're usually located in parks and other public areas, and the cachers usually place them at locations that have a scenic or other special value for having found the location. It's a bit like hide-and-seek, and all you need is a GPS. It'd be interesting to see a string of GC sign-in's running across the USA by someone.
I've got one of the "first run" Apex 2600's, and it has RGB composite outputs, as well as that wonderful "you should not be here" hidden menu that got it pulled off the shelves just after mine came home with me. (can turn off microvision and set region to everyone's favorite: "bypass") The only issue with this one is it has coaxial digital audio out, and it wasn't exactly trivial to find a receiver that had a coaxial digital audio-in port.
If I recall correctly, the digital streams have a "do not copy" flag they send with the encoded video stream, and end units in the digital chain will flip you the bird if you try to record such a digital stream with them. All part of the RIAA's coveted chain of trust system. If you want their decryption keys for the digital stream to make your digital video appliance, you have to sign a contract that promises you'll take away all your customer's fair-use rights.
a car stereo that has a "docking bay" slot in it where you can just plug in your iPod? That would be ideal, just stuff it into the dash to play your tunes in the vehicle, while charging the iPod, then take the iPod with you when you go. No need to pull the stereo out of the dash to load new music onto it either. And having an important component removable should make it less prone to theft also, as the MP3 stereos seem to be very high risk right now.
Following the links, Kensington doesn't list an MSRP or sell it directly, but the other links indicated the "going rate" for the toy is $22.00, and I think that's well within budget for a computer toy.
It could really use an external antenna though. If it had this, (or if the unit itself exhibited some amount of directional reception?) then it would be much more useful to find the actual location (down to say, which building on the storefront) the hotspot was at. The closer bench gets the better connectivity!
Maybe someone will post a hack shortly that shows how to jurry-rig an antenna port on the little bugger. I'd also like to "me too" a previous post that suggested an external power connection. Just keep the puppy sitting on your dash whilst driving around town until the green lights start climbing up.
Was anyone able to spot where these could be bought at? (this really looks like something ThinkGeek would carry)
Mplayer also works very well with AVI files. It gives you a little more control over the playback, but doesn't play VOBs or OGM files, so I keep both on-hand and use whichever works best.
My comps have always had good onboard sound. I never understood why anyone would make a motherboard without it in the first place. I realize some of today's really high quality sound cards have some things you just wouldn't find on a built-on, but there's really no excuse for lack of at least basic audio support.
So now when someone cuts you off and you give them the bird, your car can automatically honk the horn too. All too easy!
It's worth noting that while OS X is not /free/, it is CHEAP. Consider this... most people don't know, but if you read the fine print, an OS X license is good for FIVE MACHINES. This means you can buy one copy and install it on up to five puters at your house, and stay legal. That works out to $26 each. It's not free, but they are certainly trying to help you out here. And most people that would make that complaint are linux users, (since Windows doesn't offer that deal!) and I have yet to meet a linux user that owns fewer than 3 computers. Deal!
>Most movies aren't worth watching more than once anyway.
That's an opinion though. I, for example, have a large CD wallet full of my purchased DVDs, and over 90% of them have been watched many many times. There's a big business in purchased CDs. I see this as a way to get a $28.00 DVD for more like $5.00, and I have to admit it would be quite tempting.
I wonder how they would attempt to make this illegal? License the movie to me? Probably. Since otherwise, if I've actually -bought- it and -own- the copy, I can do whatever I want with it, including defeating the expiration system.
Off-topic: I hate licensing. It gives the owner (?) too much control. What's next? Licensed computer hardware? Licensing should be abolished.
Lexan is not gas-permeable. So if there is something that's taking down the disc by exposure to something in the atmosphere, it can't be sanwiched in the middle of the disc. So it's either (A) eating away the media layer (top, just under the label) or it's reacting with something on the underside to block the read laser. I'm going to assume it's not attacking the data layer because of the difficulty in getting exposure past the label that covers the data layer.
If we then assume it's on the bottom, then what's to stop me from buying a $25 CD polisher kit from my local music store, and buff off that clouded layer? Forget ripping, I'll just keep the DVDs and play them as much as I like.
And then how long will it be before the RIAA moves to get CD scratch removers banned under the DMCA?
... isn't so important if you're not always having to go through it?
Everyone loved Bugs Bunny and Road Runner. All the rest of the Warner Brothers characters had speeth impedimenths but we loved them anyway. "Oh, that makes me so aaaaaangry!"
Kids' shows featured casts of kids doing silly things. Nobody remembers what, but we all remember enjoying it just the same. Nobody ever figured out how to talk like the kids on Zoom did. We remember the other more useful things instead... Box 350, Boston Mass, oh-two-one-three-four.
Why can't my self-addressed, stamped envelope get me that fan stuff back the next day? ACME always gets the Coyote's packages delivered in seconds. Anyone that says today's television is more violent than it used to be has never seen what happens to the Coyote several times in any five minute stretch. I bet he's got a lot of 'frequent flier' miles built up, mostly vertical, down to be specific.
Popeye was cool, but never did persuade me to try spinish. Mickey Mouse and crew were probably the ideal cartoon, leaving out the violence and still keeping us smiling. Donald Duck had all sorts of issues. Taz wasn't cool yet.
We remember all those silly repititious cartoons that we never got tired of watching. Scooby Do, Space Ghost, Super Friends. I was always in awe at how the Mystery Machine crew spotted minor details I missed, detailed later in the show in a flashback... only later with repeats did I notice that they cheated us by not actually showing the minor detail in the earlier part of the show.
While I certainly don't blame any psychotic behavior on Road Runner, I would pose a few questions about how cartoons may have affected us. How many kids tried dog biscuits after watching Shaggy on Scooby Do? How many kids expected more of the Post Office after watching Wiley Coyote? How many of us thought you couldn't fall unless you made the mistake of looking down?
It's a shame these are very rare to see now on Saturday morning. Closest thing I've seen recently would be Animaniacs - characters being silly for sillyness' sake. Isn't that what being a kid is all about?
I know, I know, it's the handyman's secret weapon, but it's really not necessary. I had a dust problem in my basement where my servers hide, and I cured the problem cheaply and easily, no duct tape required.
Get a cheapo box fan, $15-20 at your local wal-mart/k-mart/s-mart store. (shop smart, shop s-mart!) While you're there, look at the furnace filters. Buy the cheapest they have. Stick the fan where you need it, turn it on high, and set the filter on the intake side. Suction will hold it on. You can ignore the gaps around the sides, they really don't require sealing up, although I actually had to go find a little bit of scrap to lean against the filter because it falls off if the power fails. (unless you're puting your fan on the UPS...)
The filter works fine to remove dust, lint, hair, and other sorts of airborn junk. Zero hassel to change the filters, and they're cheap. (under a buck each, usually) Mine require changing about every 2 months. You might want to experiment a bit on fan placement... it's important to find the best spot where airflow is optimal. If you run an AC unit in the room, this will also help cut down on how often you have to clean its intake filter.
I like the Endust idea someone else posted, I'll have to try that. Good advice also to keep the equipment off the floor, setting your box on the floor is the fastest way to fill the case with dust bunnies and sieze up your fan.
I looked at the specs for Bittorrent (thanks to the author who provides full specs!) and from that and what I saw when downloading Animatrix, it's easy to see what happens.
/.'d at the start. (I'm assuming each BT client tries to download segments in random order)
The system is designed to talk with other peers trying to download the same torrent file, and checks around to establish a list of best (fastest) providers. He's got a lot of nice adjustments in the protocol to favor swapping of parts too, which is a nice touch. (I'll give you block 25 if you give me block 18)
If the mesh has enough people that have already downloaded some blocks, (should happen almost immediately?) then the host basically does nothing besides help hook new downloaders into the mesh. This is why the host doesn't get
As for the client's view of things... I was quite impressed with Bittorrent's ability to saturate my line as soon as it got moving. (it took a couple minutes to get its bearings in the mesh before it started) Once it was on its feet, it had my 768kbit line doing a solid 80+k/sec download. Very nice.
NOTE, there is a penalty. Iirc, Bittorrent forms up to 20 connections (download) at a time. This effect was very apparent in that two other file transfers that I had going at the time got the rug pulled out from under them. Instead of my "three" downloads getting an even split at say 25,25,25 k/sec, it was more like 80,3,2 k/sec. Bittorrent's use of many pipes, combined with the network and OS "sharing" the bandwidth between the pipes (instead of the applications) caused some nasty starvation on my other non-BT downloads.
Overall, I like it. I wish more big things were available via BT. I left Animatrix up for about six hours after it completed, and the mesh was only drawing between 0-4 k/sec from me during that time. Surely a fair trade! The author has a paypal link at his site, think about tossing him a couple bucks and lets see this evolve even farther.
We've always known M$'s main skill was not in innovation, but rather in buying/borrowing technology and trying to grow it. At least now they're trying to do it in a slightly more honest and upfront way and actually pay for it before they take it.
What is the most effective thing Joe Q. Public can do to fight DRM? There are all sorts of organizations with various methods, including petitions, boycotts, information-sharing, etc., and the ever popular "write your senator" form letters. This seems like a case of David vs Goliath, and I'd like to know what stone would be best to pick up.
I don't know much about the laws regaurding fraud and other illegal activities done "through" a foreign country. I was under the impression that it was still prossicutable to "launder" money by way of an out-of-country bank account. Is there any reason why relaying spam or running a spam engine from offshore would be legal for a US resident?
Apple had a great relationship with Adobe, and had them at I don't know how many keynotes to tout how well Adobe worked with (name any model of apple) and that worked out well for both Apple and Adobe. But now, Apple is designing a lot of free or low-cost software that is in direct competition with Adobe's products. I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe hadn't already discussed this announcement with Apple as a sort of a "quit shoving us out of the market, or we are going to stop committing to it."
Apple is playing with a double-edged sword here. Consumers like to have free software bundled with their computer, but its presence makes it more difficult for software producers to find a proffitable niche in the market, and ultimately results in a decline of available software. This hurts the consumer it was intended to benefit, and ultimately the strategy backfires on the computer/OS vendor that supplied the free software in the first place.
Case in point: how many web browsers do you see for sale nowadays? That market is no longer economically viable for any software publisher. I remember when Netscape was a pay product, with a "free for educational or home use" license, but I somehow doubt they made any money on it.
In some ways, Apple's strategies are just as harmful as Microsoft's. M$ has its wonderful "embrace and expand" tactic they use to hijack new technology, but Apple just plain embraces and gives away for free, which have the same result - lowering the viability of a software niche. In that respect, Apple's producing the operating system AND software titles is just as harmful as with Microsoft doing it. (who are often criticized and periodically endited as a result)
Don't forget... the desalinization process also produces salt. Dump that back into the ocean and you jack the salt concentration up far enough to kill well, most everything in the area of the plant. Dumping it on land is no better, it's essentially poison to plants. It's also not very clean, because it's mixed in with all the other various things found in seawater, inlcuding waste, debris, dead plankton, stray fish, etc., so I don't know how good of a candidate it would be for use as a salt resource.
There are also basic maintenance issues. Barnicles love places where lots of water flows by, and they can cement themselves to nearly anything. I wonder if they have plans on how to clean out the inside of that pipe periodically?
Call Office Depot's customer service number.
1-888-463-3768
What I will be telling them tomorrow morning when I call:
"When I am looking for computer hardware, I usually drive to the store I believe will have what I want, or at least offer me a good selection to pick from. I've bought a wide range of products from your store, including CD blanks, cables, optic mice, a computer chair, and even a digital camera. I see no reason to visit your store if you are deliberately cutting your selection down to what a single software company believes is the right hardware for me. So long as that silly 'Micro$oft-approved products only' rule is in effect at your stores, don't expect to see me or my wallet there."
CALL THEM!
Just lift the keyboard up on the tibook and you'll see five heat pipes running away from the processor heat sink. They go to various parts of the computer, and usually end bonded to a metal plate with holes in it, to dissipate the heat. I don't know if these are the same type of heat pipe the original poster is describing, but they serve the same purpose.
:-) That was a really good idea.
:(
My previous powerbook, a 1998 "wallstreet", had no heat pipes, but used the keyboard to dissipate CPU heat. The back side of the keyboard was aluminum, and sat squarely on top of the CPU heat spreader. It made for a nice warm toasty feeling on the fingers while gaming with it in the winter.
The problem the powerbooks have with heat seems to be the video... people always seem to forget that heat source in laptops. In both the ti and the wallstreet, that heats up the BOTTOM of the computer. I wouldn't even think of playing UT with the computer on my lap. The wallstreet had an interesting design on the bottom in that the sides where your legs would be were plastic - the center was the aluminum heat plate, and if you set it on your lap with your legs spread properly, you were free of any heat issues. Another excellent design idea not included in the new TiBooks.
I don't see a serious heat issue for most powerbook users. I'm sitting here typing up this post and I have, on average, one of the 19 bars lit up on my CPU monitor. The bottom of the tibook is only pleasantly warm to the touch, certainly not hot by anyone's opinion. I don't have any of the "power cycling" features turned on either... I'm sure it'd run even cooler if I enabled those. Now if I started ripping MP3s and compiling, the processor would get busy and the fan would spin up and she'd get warm.
How do PC laptops handle various workloads? I've used a few awhile back and they all seemed to be just as hot no matter if you were or weren't doing anything with them. I also noticed that if you pluged them into AC power, they'd crank up their CPU speed and get a lot warmer.
I'd love to work on something like this, but I don't have the money so all I can do is "armchair quarterback" it. Assuming money was no object, and I had access to all the fun toys that are currently available....
- Vision: synthetic aperature radar. This would be the ideal way to detect potholes, judge distance and height, etc. Very expensive stuff, unfortunately. Also include forward-looking color camera to read signs etc.
- Processing: one poster suggested "divide and conquer", which would probably be the best approach. Feed the world data from the radar/camera into multiple systems, each for dealing with a different problem. Here's what you'd have to be able to deal with:
1. identifying road positions. Not too hard to do, just look for the center line and shoulder.
2. identify unpaved road paths. (gravel and dirt) More complicated.
3. Identify road hazards.
4. Process road signs. (speed limit in particular)
5. Navigation during maneuvers. (merging, turning, changing road types, stopping, pulling over and pulling out)
6. several smaller algorythms to detect uncommon but possible conditions, such as encountering a slow moving vehicle, cattle on the road, being passed by another vehicle, identification of blocked roads (construction, bridge out, detour) and so forth. Each of these would have to be handled as an interrupting action.
A GPS will no doubt be essential to any design.
A fully loaded map system would have to be in the mix as well. Think MapQuest or something like that. It would need the ability to plot a sensible course from any two given points.
Navigation would combine all of these elements. Use of the GPS and the road detectors would keep the "bot" on course. Road hazard system would interrupt to deal with dynamic situations and general vehicle safety. In the event of a road hazard, it would probably be smartest to simply mark that bit of the road as "no longer there" and calculate a new route. Better to turn around and detour to go around a tumbleweed in the road than to try to run it over.
Speed determination would require some thought. Road conditions, weather, terrain roughness, speed limit, would all have to be factored in.
Dealing with various traffic controls would be necessary. Stop signs, speed limit changes, etc would be not challenge too much.
Uncontrolled intersections would be a pain, and might require the radar/camera to be able to swivel around to "look both ways before crossing" etc.
Off-road conditions would be especially difficult. Obstacles would be difficult to quantify. (just how much do we need to slow down for that pothole?) This is why the radar would be so important... stereo vision is too easily confused by shadows and other factors, and if you're trucking along at 40mph you have to know if that's a shadow or a hole or a small boulder.
It would probably be a good idea to have some reasonable additions made for general vehicle monitoring. Gas, temp, oil pressure, interior temp, spedometer, tach all would need to provide feedback to the system. It would be a good idea to have a way to detect a flat tire, but I can't think offhand of a good way to do that, especially considering the possibility of needing to cross rough terrain.
Hopefully they would allow some reasonable safety controls. I'd like to see a live camera feed to monitor progress, and a set of like three kill buttons that can transmit emergency overrides in the event of malfunction. One to trigger an orderly "pull over and stop", one to do an emergency stop (hard brake and kill engine) and one to "kill engine and immediately shut down".
Lastly, an "overseer" would be a very wise thing to include. A small computer running on independent power with interrupt control over the steering, throttle, brake, and ignition. It's only job would be to monitor the navigation system for faults. If navigation goes out, the overseer would quickly but safely stop the vehicle, and attempt to restart the navigation. (reboot) If this fails, it would stop the ignition and trigger a distress beacon.
I recall seeing an article awhile ago where companies were buying defective memory, and running them in these external testing units,which would identify which chip(s) on the stick were bad. I'm assuming they'd then unsolder the bad chip and recover one from another module. At that time some of those sticks had 8 chips on each side, so you could recover 15 good sticks from 16 bad ones. Considering the price of memory a few yrs ago, it was probably a worthwhile venture. Nowadays though, it's probably not worth anyone's time.