You're falling into the trap of assuming that an antennae HAS to be a perfect antennae, ie, the maximum efficiency. That is all that matching wavelength will gain you. I wasn't talking about broadcasting the 100Mhz carrier 'miles', just enough to affect a FM receiver sat next to a PC.
Anyway, my FM receiver certainly locks to a phantom station at 100.0 when my PC is turned on (and it does NOT when the PC is turned off)
Btw, if you apply the same logic to AM, as in the story these comments are attached to, then you'd have to be arguing that a monitor cannot possibly generate AM freq range signals, because it would require HUNDREDS of meters of antennae.
As to the length of traces on a board, you'd be amazed as to just how long some of them can be, if you were to 'unwind' them.
And put an FM tuner next to it, tune to 100.0 and you should find an empty channel that the receiver claims it is locked to... Assuming you have a 100Mhz clock (or at least a combination of signals that beat to 100Mhz - a 133Mhz FSB + 33Mhz PCI should still produce around a 100Mhz beat freq.) somewhere in your system, that is acting as an unmodulated carrier.
I had an '81 and had a program that did the same thing. If I remember correctly, it made use of the FAST and SLOW modes of the machine to generate 'noise' on the picture. Then you detuned the TV channel slightly, until you got 'music'.
The one I had on the '81 definately worked, unfortunately, it was really pointless, as the act of generating 'noise' in the right sequence to create sounds/tones was somewhat intensive, and couldn't have been used in a game or otherwise.
As others have suggested, there is apple:), but
you also have a choice of a few Single Board Computer (SBC) vendors that sell PPC boards designed to run linux.
While a SBC doesn't seem a logical choice for a desktop, it does have some nice advantages. Most SBCs contain a fairly reasonable set of desktop-like components, such as 100baseT, 3d video, AC97 audio, etc.
An interesting thought is whether you could get a ETX/EBX format SBC card into the old shoebox size Sun cases. Though they would also fit into an external 5.25" SCSI enclosure with a little work, that would be fun too.
That those 'warez monkeys' don't also warez Office and AOE...
Which seems somewhat unlikely. Though there is likely a fairly small base of warez monkeys that pirates the OS, but then pays for office, I would imagine its not that big, most people willing/able to download a 200MB+ (I dunno how big XP is, thats just how big (220MB) the last Win2000RC was that I downloaded from MSDN legally) aren't going to think twice about downloading an Office copy at the same size.
That said, the above mentioned time I downloaded 220MB of Win2k RC from MSDN, I was on 56k, it wasn't anything even resembling fun, I only did it because MS had released the RC to MSDN developers via Download, but were dragging their feet on mailing out the physical CD copies (IIRC, they sent it out something like 2 months after putting it on the download site).
Every one of my Web browser copies (I have 3) is clearly a GDROM. You can easily tell by looking at the surface of the disc, if the data segment starts about 1/4 of the way from the center of the disc, and has a small ring of text printed before it, its most likely a GDROM.
Just because a disc is the same size and physical appearance as a CD, doesn't make it a CD - otherwise you'd be claiming DVD's were CD's too:)
Oh, and another way to check for a GDROM is to put it in a CD drive, a GDROM will appear to have 1 very short audio track and no data tracks.
GDROM's are 1GB (high density) CD's, so no, there is no way to burn a GDROM short of getting hold of a GDROM writer + GDR blanks, the mechanisms Sega used were made by Yamaha (later by matshushita I believe).
As for a link to sega removing CD-boot functionality
check
The NetBSD DC howto. Note the first requirement that the DC be manufactured before September 2000. While the requirement says that SOME of the newer consoles still work, they were likely old stock boards that didn't have the functionality removed. I think that the Boob site has some comments on the newer DC's not booting CD s, but it appears to have been/.'ed.
Don't forget that the Linux/DC and NetBSD/DC ports rely on being able to boot from a CD.
This is a functionality that Sega took away several months ago, meaning that the newer dreamcasts cannot boot Linux/DC, NetBSD/DC, the Bleem packs, the Utopia bootdisk, or anything else that isn't on a GDROM.
The $50 dreamcasts are a nice cheap game system, but don't buy a new DC expecting to run linux or netbsd just by burning the images on the net to a CDR.
Re:Internet in Afghanistan highly doubtful
on
Message from Kabul
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· Score: 1
Or perhaps he's one of the few that uses packet radio over some sort of HAM equipment. There are HAM operators all around the world, and its the logical choice for internet access in areas that are 'remote'. Prior to the taleban there were probably no FCC-equivalent regulating HAM usage, and anyone with the ability to build/buy the equipment would be able to use it.
* A good soldering iron, a stack of vector board cards, and a bucket of BJTs, resistors, caps, and LEDs.
I'd also suggest in addition to this:
* A handful of PIC16F84(A)'s
* All components nessecary for a JDM84 interface.
* A copy of PonyProg2000. (You choose if you want linux or windows versions)
* One (or more) of the many PIC assemblers or compilers.
Its so much more fun when your electronics projects are programmable.:)
XLisp was a great language, at the time I used it (around '90-'91) it was my favorite of the 'interpreted/runtime-bound OO' languages. It was also the best of the free Lisps around the time, and since I don't remember any free full CLisp implementation that included the OO stuff, the only OO lisp I remember being free. Even the sun common-lisp implementation we used at uni, didn't fully support the OO extensions, from what I remember.
Even now, its OO syntax is a little more intuitive , if you know smalltalk, than CLisp. Although its OO syntax was always quite different from CLisp.
If I remember correctly, thats because Wirth wasn't really involved with Modula-3. After Modula-2 he concentrated on Oberon, which is up to version 4 these days, and appears to have a fairly good following.
Up here in the NY mountains, its already getting pretty busy in the last half hour. So far I've counted about 40, and oddly enough, most were small bolides (big, and slow, enough to leave a grey smoke trail, but not quite 'fireball' material). So far, if the peak estimation is correct, then it looks on track to being as, or more, spectacular as predicted.
Lets just hope they got the peak right (they have estimated the wrong peak time in the past), and this is the start of the bell curve on NASA's rate graph:)
Re:Penguins crashing through windows....
on
XBox Released
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· Score: 2, Interesting
A port of a GLX enabled X (the 'nvidia' driver) might be difficult, but certainly the plain 'nv' driver should be possible to port (reasonably easily).
It might not mean a linux port worthy of writing games for, but it would be a linux port. After all, the dreamcast port doesn't support GLX, as far as I know.
Besides, as has been said many times: X isn't linux:)
Does that include evaluation as well? I suspect that it doesn't - othwise they wouldn't be able to sell anything. Playing with something to see if it can do what you want it to do is not development - since the immediate goal is testing and not a usable product.
As long as you don't 'evaluate' it with any code that will be in your final product, you're ok. This may be ok if all you're writing is a UI driven app, where one dialog is much the same as another. If however, you're interfacing directly with specific hardware IO, and/or dealing with tasks such as runtime loading of C++ classes, writing simple 'eval' programs may not give you the full picture.
Once again, the Trolltech FAQ specifically says that if you use Qt/free at any point of development, you are locked into releasing under the GPL. No exceptions, and no, buying a pro license doesn't remove that lock - in fact, its specifically addressed that you CANNOT develop any of your product using Qt/Free, then re-license.
As to enforcement, my point was that whether you illegally use a cracked evaluation version, illegally use a pirated Qt-X11/Pro (I'll bet its pirated out there somewhere, IF in fact Qt-X11/Pro isn't just a piece of paper that says you can release commercial binaries from the regular Qt/Free headers/libs), or use Qt/Free and illegally release a commercial app. It makes no difference, you're breaking the license under any of those situations, and not releasing an eval version isn't adequate protection against someone breaking the license if they so wish.
In fact, the easiest route of breaking the license for someone so inclined, is the obvious: use Qt/Free and ignore the GPL license. Going to all the trouble of downloading and cracking (some mythical) Qt-X11/Eval version, makes little sense.
On the other hand, how many developers use APIs, Compilers, etc without a license? Sure some developers will use a cracked/pirated version in preference to hardware-protected version (3D Studio Max for example, lots of game dev houses use cracked versions because of limitations with the dongle), but few (if any) use totally unlicensed tools or APIs, its just too much potential liability to use in a commercial environment. Shareware devs are perhaps a different case, but I don't see how that really applies to Qt anyway, the license is too expensive for the majority of shareware developers, and if they want to rip-off trolltech, they'll just use Qt/Free illegally.
OTOH, it also means that any new 'anti-open source' technologies that they introduce in XP or future OS releases are less likely to become the de facto standard.
I'm not saying any of those technologies are in XP, I don't know, I have it (via MSDN) but have no intention of installing it on any machines, as you say, there simply isn't any real incentive.
Re:Why the bloody hell does the release day matter
on
Gamecube Hits US Early
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· Score: 1
Ahh, Thanks, I had it the wrong way around, I thought it was supposed to be 700k Xbox, and around 370k cubes.
But with the numbers biased towards nintendo that way, there is a lot more sense for letting stores sell cubes early at their descretion - many stores will likely roll out the cube when they run out of xboxes, even those that claim to be holding to the 18th date.
I've tried all that, different angles (thank god its a linksys with proper antennae), etc etc. I think the bottom line is that the signal is at the low end, and when I have the laptop flat, the laptop is between the PCMCIA card antennae and the base station, and acting as a RF shield enough to drop the already low signal to a point of 'not being good enough'.
If laptop manufacturers would put a PCMCIA slot on each side of the laptop, it wouldn't be an issue, I'd put the card in the left side of the laptop, and it'd be fine.
It being a linksys station, if moving the basestation to another place in the room with my net, and moving the bed, don't work, then I'll try a higher gain antennae. I'm sure I'll get it sorted out in the end - probably 2 days before I buy a 802.11a setup:)
OK - say troll let you have the full version for evalution (as if the free version is not enough for evalution), when do you buy the licence? Do you buy it at the start of development of your commercial app? Obviously not from the above comments.
Do you buy it on release? Obviously not because that will stop shareware writers, since they can't afford it at that point.
Actually, yes, IF I had the oppurtunity to evaluate it, and decided to use it for a commercial product, I would pay for my license before or at release.
After all, the above wants a FULL version for evaluation,
Actually, NO, thats not really what I want at all, what I would LIKE is that trolltech remove the 'if you've used Qt/Free version at any point of development, your product MUST be GPLed' requirement. Ie, if I decide to release a project based on Qt, commercially, as long as I've paid for the license before release, there should be no issues.
and any time limit locks would be trivial to get around on a *nix system
Just because it would be trivial protection to break, doesn't mean it would not be illegal. Likewise, right now its only law stopping people writing commercial apps with Qt/Free. If it happens, its illegal, if Trolltech want to prosecute, they can. The same situation is perfectly valid even if the developer has a 'cracked' version of the Qt/Evaluation version. Whether a compiled app is watermarked with a QT_FREE_ symbol, QT_EVAL_, or QT_LICENSED_ symbol is going to be irrelevant in the end, because for trolltech to put effort into looking at a binary to see which version the developer targetted against, is going to require MORE effort than just looking in their customer database to see if the company in particular has licensed Qt.
The range of my base station is exactly 4" too short for using the laptop in bed, I have to sit with the laptop on my lap, tilted so that the antennae is 'just that bit closer'.
(It will actually 'work' without tilting it, its just that the signal strength fluctuates between 0% and 5% all the time, resulting in constant re-acquires, tilting the laptop that extra couple of inchs closer gives me a few more % of signal strength and a reliable(ish) connection)
One day I suppose I should move the base station, or the bed, or both:)
Re:Why the bloody hell does the release day matter
on
Gamecube Hits US Early
·
· Score: 1
It worked in relation to selling more saturns early on.
The problem was that compared to the playstation, the saturn had greater problems than its release date. It was doomed from long before the release, it just took alittle while for the public to realise it. Even then, it wasn't really Sega's fault that the design was flawed, the playstation represented a fairly major shift in how consoles were designed, and how developers attacked the problems of console development. The playstation made console development much more inline with PC development, whereas the Saturn had a more traditional 'you really need to hit the metal to get the best performance' console approach, compared to Sony/Psygnosis's developer-friendly set of (already well known, gcc based) tools.
1... Why not? People are synthesizing other CPUs that aren't really 'useful' in these days.
2... Because you can!
3... Because its part of our history, and keeping these things alive is part of our duty to preserve the history of computer science, even if a synthesized core is only the chip in question from an external point of view, it still preserves the memory.a well written VHDL specification should document how the chip works for anyone in the future to examine.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, my FM receiver certainly locks to a phantom station at 100.0 when my PC is turned on (and it does NOT when the PC is turned off)
Btw, if you apply the same logic to AM, as in the story these comments are attached to, then you'd have to be arguing that a monitor cannot possibly generate AM freq range signals, because it would require HUNDREDS of meters of antennae.
As to the length of traces on a board, you'd be amazed as to just how long some of them can be, if you were to 'unwind' them.
And put an FM tuner next to it, tune to 100.0 and you should find an empty channel that the receiver claims it is locked to... Assuming you have a 100Mhz clock (or at least a combination of signals that beat to 100Mhz - a 133Mhz FSB + 33Mhz PCI should still produce around a 100Mhz beat freq.) somewhere in your system, that is acting as an unmodulated carrier.
The one I had on the '81 definately worked, unfortunately, it was really pointless, as the act of generating 'noise' in the right sequence to create sounds/tones was somewhat intensive, and couldn't have been used in a game or otherwise.
So much so, that the first US nuclear sub was called the Nautilus in honor.
While a SBC doesn't seem a logical choice for a desktop, it does have some nice advantages. Most SBCs contain a fairly reasonable set of desktop-like components, such as 100baseT, 3d video, AC97 audio, etc.
An interesting thought is whether you could get a ETX/EBX format SBC card into the old shoebox size Sun cases. Though they would also fit into an external 5.25" SCSI enclosure with a little work, that would be fun too.
It sure would explain a lot :)
That those 'warez monkeys' don't also warez Office and AOE...
Which seems somewhat unlikely. Though there is likely a fairly small base of warez monkeys that pirates the OS, but then pays for office, I would imagine its not that big, most people willing/able to download a 200MB+ (I dunno how big XP is, thats just how big (220MB) the last Win2000RC was that I downloaded from MSDN legally) aren't going to think twice about downloading an Office copy at the same size.
That said, the above mentioned time I downloaded 220MB of Win2k RC from MSDN, I was on 56k, it wasn't anything even resembling fun, I only did it because MS had released the RC to MSDN developers via Download, but were dragging their feet on mailing out the physical CD copies (IIRC, they sent it out something like 2 months after putting it on the download site).
Just because a disc is the same size and physical appearance as a CD, doesn't make it a CD - otherwise you'd be claiming DVD's were CD's too :)
Oh, and another way to check for a GDROM is to put it in a CD drive, a GDROM will appear to have 1 very short audio track and no data tracks.
As for a link to sega removing CD-boot functionality check The NetBSD DC howto. Note the first requirement that the DC be manufactured before September 2000. While the requirement says that SOME of the newer consoles still work, they were likely old stock boards that didn't have the functionality removed. I think that the Boob site has some comments on the newer DC's not booting CD s, but it appears to have been /.'ed.
This is a functionality that Sega took away several months ago, meaning that the newer dreamcasts cannot boot Linux/DC, NetBSD/DC, the Bleem packs, the Utopia bootdisk, or anything else that isn't on a GDROM.
The $50 dreamcasts are a nice cheap game system, but don't buy a new DC expecting to run linux or netbsd just by burning the images on the net to a CDR.
Or perhaps he's one of the few that uses packet radio over some sort of HAM equipment. There are HAM operators all around the world, and its the logical choice for internet access in areas that are 'remote'. Prior to the taleban there were probably no FCC-equivalent regulating HAM usage, and anyone with the ability to build/buy the equipment would be able to use it.
I'd also suggest in addition to this:
* A handful of PIC16F84(A)'s
* All components nessecary for a JDM84 interface.
* A copy of PonyProg2000. (You choose if you want linux or windows versions)
* One (or more) of the many PIC assemblers or compilers.
Its so much more fun when your electronics projects are programmable. :)
Even now, its OO syntax is a little more intuitive , if you know smalltalk, than CLisp. Although its OO syntax was always quite different from CLisp.
If I remember correctly, thats because Wirth wasn't really involved with Modula-3. After Modula-2 he concentrated on Oberon, which is up to version 4 these days, and appears to have a fairly good following.
Take a look HERE for an overall Oberon reference.
Lets just hope they got the peak right (they have estimated the wrong peak time in the past), and this is the start of the bell curve on NASA's rate graph :)
It might not mean a linux port worthy of writing games for, but it would be a linux port. After all, the dreamcast port doesn't support GLX, as far as I know.
Besides, as has been said many times: X isn't linux :)
As long as you don't 'evaluate' it with any code that will be in your final product, you're ok. This may be ok if all you're writing is a UI driven app, where one dialog is much the same as another. If however, you're interfacing directly with specific hardware IO, and/or dealing with tasks such as runtime loading of C++ classes, writing simple 'eval' programs may not give you the full picture.
Once again, the Trolltech FAQ specifically says that if you use Qt/free at any point of development, you are locked into releasing under the GPL. No exceptions, and no, buying a pro license doesn't remove that lock - in fact, its specifically addressed that you CANNOT develop any of your product using Qt/Free, then re-license.
As to enforcement, my point was that whether you illegally use a cracked evaluation version, illegally use a pirated Qt-X11/Pro (I'll bet its pirated out there somewhere, IF in fact Qt-X11/Pro isn't just a piece of paper that says you can release commercial binaries from the regular Qt/Free headers/libs), or use Qt/Free and illegally release a commercial app. It makes no difference, you're breaking the license under any of those situations, and not releasing an eval version isn't adequate protection against someone breaking the license if they so wish.
In fact, the easiest route of breaking the license for someone so inclined, is the obvious: use Qt/Free and ignore the GPL license. Going to all the trouble of downloading and cracking (some mythical) Qt-X11/Eval version, makes little sense.
On the other hand, how many developers use APIs, Compilers, etc without a license? Sure some developers will use a cracked/pirated version in preference to hardware-protected version (3D Studio Max for example, lots of game dev houses use cracked versions because of limitations with the dongle), but few (if any) use totally unlicensed tools or APIs, its just too much potential liability to use in a commercial environment. Shareware devs are perhaps a different case, but I don't see how that really applies to Qt anyway, the license is too expensive for the majority of shareware developers, and if they want to rip-off trolltech, they'll just use Qt/Free illegally.
I'm not saying any of those technologies are in XP, I don't know, I have it (via MSDN) but have no intention of installing it on any machines, as you say, there simply isn't any real incentive.
But with the numbers biased towards nintendo that way, there is a lot more sense for letting stores sell cubes early at their descretion - many stores will likely roll out the cube when they run out of xboxes, even those that claim to be holding to the 18th date.
If laptop manufacturers would put a PCMCIA slot on each side of the laptop, it wouldn't be an issue, I'd put the card in the left side of the laptop, and it'd be fine.
It being a linksys station, if moving the basestation to another place in the room with my net, and moving the bed, don't work, then I'll try a higher gain antennae. I'm sure I'll get it sorted out in the end - probably 2 days before I buy a 802.11a setup :)
Do you buy it on release? Obviously not because that will stop shareware writers, since they can't afford it at that point.
Actually, yes, IF I had the oppurtunity to evaluate it, and decided to use it for a commercial product, I would pay for my license before or at release.
After all, the above wants a FULL version for evaluation,
Actually, NO, thats not really what I want at all, what I would LIKE is that trolltech remove the 'if you've used Qt/Free version at any point of development, your product MUST be GPLed' requirement. Ie, if I decide to release a project based on Qt, commercially, as long as I've paid for the license before release, there should be no issues.
and any time limit locks would be trivial to get around on a *nix system
Just because it would be trivial protection to break, doesn't mean it would not be illegal. Likewise, right now its only law stopping people writing commercial apps with Qt/Free. If it happens, its illegal, if Trolltech want to prosecute, they can. The same situation is perfectly valid even if the developer has a 'cracked' version of the Qt/Evaluation version. Whether a compiled app is watermarked with a QT_FREE_ symbol, QT_EVAL_, or QT_LICENSED_ symbol is going to be irrelevant in the end, because for trolltech to put effort into looking at a binary to see which version the developer targetted against, is going to require MORE effort than just looking in their customer database to see if the company in particular has licensed Qt.
(It will actually 'work' without tilting it, its just that the signal strength fluctuates between 0% and 5% all the time, resulting in constant re-acquires, tilting the laptop that extra couple of inchs closer gives me a few more % of signal strength and a reliable(ish) connection)
One day I suppose I should move the base station, or the bed, or both :)
The problem was that compared to the playstation, the saturn had greater problems than its release date. It was doomed from long before the release, it just took alittle while for the public to realise it. Even then, it wasn't really Sega's fault that the design was flawed, the playstation represented a fairly major shift in how consoles were designed, and how developers attacked the problems of console development. The playstation made console development much more inline with PC development, whereas the Saturn had a more traditional 'you really need to hit the metal to get the best performance' console approach, compared to Sony/Psygnosis's developer-friendly set of (already well known, gcc based) tools.
1... Why not? People are synthesizing other CPUs that aren't really 'useful' in these days.
2... Because you can!
3... Because its part of our history, and keeping these things alive is part of our duty to preserve the history of computer science, even if a synthesized core is only the chip in question from an external point of view, it still preserves the memory.a well written VHDL specification should document how the chip works for anyone in the future to examine.
the last component of the sample calculator design was obviously '1 4004' not 4001