what stops me, joe coder from hacking together my own open source p2p file sharing tool, to get around this? i mean look at gnutella for example. sure you can stop the big boys with targets on them, but it will be impossible to make a program which doesn't have said functionality cease to exist.
this is not a fascinating new discovery in probability theory, though they make it sound that way. of course when you flip a coin it can be biased if you can influence the number of spins. But after a certain number of spins, it might as well be random since you have less control over it.
Essentially you're right, but you're kind of looking at it the wrong way. It is an LC circuit, but there isn't a coil or capacitor in the discrete component sense. Take a look at the device that you get from Barnes & Noble or in a CD case. It looks like a wire that is configured in a spiral. HMMMM Now that's an LC circuit (if you want to think of it like that), but must people think of it as an antenna. I've never found out exactly how these systems work, but I imagine that they emit some RF and listen for some type of scattering from the device. When an EM wave impinges on some material, some of it will be reradiated in the scattered field. I'm willing to bet (but admit i could well be wrong,please correct me) there's some kind of nonlinearity which emits/scatters a distinguishible signal of different frequency. Otherwise you'd have to use atime-domain technique to "look for" the scattered signal (must differentiate between what you're transmitting and receiving).
well yeah, theoretically in a market the price will be exactly how much people are willing to pay for agood or service.
what makes auctions interesting is that usually with used equipment it will be discounted to reflect depreciation and the fact that it is obviously "not new"(this is attractive to some people for subjective reasons).
And your reference to ebay is really half the story. I've bought a number of things on eBay which were great items, equivalent to a new item but for significantly less. the point i was trying to make was that these people were extraordinarily dumb in that they would pay "new" prices for "used" items. the fact taht enron had so many to give away seemed to insinuate an "everything must go" sort of desperation, which was clearly not the case (but insinuating that worked excellently well to attract bidders). if only they had realized that there was no incentive to purchase at the auction. Many of those auctions are "as-is", you know, and so you couldn't have the service possible from a retail store (eg being able to return a defective unit).
I participated in the Enron auction, and let me tell you it was utterly a waste of time. The prices really were hardly less than retail value, and considering that the equipment was used (i was mostly interested in computers and lcd's) it was overpriced. What you had were lots of dumb folks out there that jacked up the prices so that nothing was really all that good of a deal or anything to be surprised about. I swear there were used 15" LCD's going for $4-500. You could buy one from BestBuy for that price last year.
I'm just really skeptical about these auctions. I found that it really wasn't worth the effort of getting registered, calling in, etc.
but seriously, this is a weakness of the slashdot system. i'm just trying to expose it and make it open for everyone to see.
it is also somewhat entertaining to see the moderators mod you up for something worthless, while MANY good comments are ignored or marked as flamebait due to non-conformity.
According to the information published by different media, Wireless USB will support up to 480Mb/s transfer speed over 4 meters and up to 110Mb/s over 10 meters.
Wireless USB will be based on the multi-band OFDM technology backed by an industry alliance that includes Intel. It also blends in the common UWB radio platform defined by the WiMedia alliance. The UWB and wireless USB specifications are in the early stages of definition. Systems using wireless USB are not expected to ship until sometime in 2005, CommsDesign web-site notes.
I've been doing this for a while, and I've known a few guys to get busted, but mostly it's unenforceable as it is. Why not make the law reflect that?
If you chose to operate an FM transmitter outside these parameters, you would be considered a "pirate" in the eyes of the FCC, and you can be discovered, even though these rules are enforced unevenly. Sometimes a 1 watt station goes unnoticed by local licensed broadcasters, so a complaint is never filed and the FCC never finds out about it. Anecdotally, we have also heard of cases where FCC agents have turned a blind eye to 1 to 3 watt stations, if it seemed like they were not bothering any licensed broadcasters. At this level, despite operating at up to 75 times the legal limit, the actual power is so minuscule that the agent decided not to pursue the case. (This is akin to a cop pulling you over for speeding, but deciding to not give you the ticket because they think you're cute. You may be able to get away with it, but let no one fool you into thinking that it is actually legal.)
Some members of Prometheus Radio Radio Project were involved in pirate broadcasting. We did this because we believed that the broadcast regulations of this country are fundamentally unfair. We ran great community radio stations in defiance of the wealth-based structure of our broadcast system. The FCC eventually confiscated our stations, but announced that they had gotten the message of our -civil disobedience and that they were going to create a legalized low power fm radio service. We decided to stop pirating and work with the FCC to build a permanent new community radio service for this country. There is still a movement of unlicensed pirate stations that continues to operate in defiance of the broadcast regulations, which truthfully have only gotten slightly better as a result of LPFM. Morally we are sympathetic to these operations, but from a practical standpoint we do not devote our work to assisting them. We focus our efforts on the stations that are going to be able to become permanent fixtures in their communities, that are able to serve diverse communities because no one needs to worry about having their door busted down for operating without a license.
Traditional film is moving swiftly toward antiquity, about to be shelved as quaintly as Selectric typewriter ribbon. But with more than half of amateur and professional photographers still attached to 35-mm cameras, the film industry isn't ready to pronounce the medium dead.
Instead, amid layoffs and slipping sales, film companies are struggling to keep the ailing industry alive.
Symptoms of illness abound. Two weeks ago, Eastman Kodak said it will lay off 15,000 workers employed in its core film business. A few months earlier, Kodak's chief executive unveiled, perhaps belatedly, a digitally oriented strategy to spur growth. No. 2 film manufacturer Fujifilm did the same.
Underscoring the urgency behind such announcements, last month the Photography Marketing Association, or PMA, reported that in 2003, digital cameras outsold traditional cameras for the first time. In addition, the group said film sales and processing revenue declined from the prior year.
But industry leaders aren't giving up on film. In a surprising turn this week, Kodak announced plans for new film-processing retail kiosks to sit beside their digital counterparts. Eliminating the in-about-an-hour middleman, customers can process and print their own photos from 35-mm film in about seven minutes. The kiosks also enable customers to select and print only the photos they want, in whichever sizes they want, much like a digital camera.
"Let the consumer decide what the consumer wants," said Kodak spokesman Gerard Meuchner. "If they want to use film, let them use film."
Meanwhile, in Las Vegas this week, attendees at the PMA's annual convention saw Fujifilm introduce three new 35-mm cameras alongside four new digital cameras. The company also announced that it is "defying current trends in the photography industry by announcing significant investment in film camera technology in 2004."
In truth, although the PMA projects digital-camera penetration to surpass 42 percent of households in 2004, that still leaves 58 percent without one. Kodak's Meuchner attributes the ratio to the slow acceptance of digital by the biggest picture-takers of all: moms.
"Mothers with children take the most pictures and have the least amount of time," Meuchner said. "But they aren't early adopters."
But even among this group, film consumption is on the wane. The PMA reports that mothers with young children are quickly becoming the most common owners of digital cameras. So while the lone bright spot for traditional film might have been the increasing sales of the mom-friendly disposable camera -- up by 7 percent in 2003 and projected to rise another 5 percent in 2004 -- even that light is dimming.
As shutter-happy parents go digital, an array of other film users -- health-imaging specialists, professional photographers, artists -- are left to keep the industry alive.
According to a 2003 survey by the Professional Photographers of America, or PPA, just 52 percent of the group's members used digital as their primary means of capturing images. But 86 percent of PPA members were using at least partial digital technology in creating finished photographs.
oth Kodak and Fujifilm are positioning their film-focused entries around convenience and ease of use -- the same benefits used to lure consumers to digital. That choice of strategy might be the only one left as the long-debated quality issue between film and digital becomes increasingly moot: Some professional photographers now claim that large photographic prints from 20-megapixel cameras or camera backs -- attachments that let film cameras take digital images -- are virtually indistinguishable from images captured on 35-mm film.
"Newer cameras and digital backs have the higher quality, resolution and pixel count that have allowed portrait and wedding photographers to switch over," said PPA chairman Steve Best, who says he is a completely digital
I blazed through this book. It is playful, irreverent, consumed by more raw ideas and imaginative takes on traditional scifi tropes than I've seen in a dog's age. And it contains the most vivid spaceship command deck combat dialogue I've ever read. If you enjoy the occasional fat mouthful of jargon, you're going to find yourself chewing vigorously throughout Singularity Sky.
Mr. Stross is obviously having more fun in some parts of his writing than others, which while noticable, isn't fatal. I think the other reviewers should give this book another read without their Clarion baseball hats on, or at least with them loosened a few notches. Perfection isn't required for enjoyment - just energy and novelty. Maybe they were dissatisfied at the denouement to the Big Space Battle, but that was the point - sometimes, you don't get the lollypop.
Singularity Sky is about *bigness*, like John Clute's _Appleseed_, but more accessbile. It's full of little in-jokes and sly tech-culture references, doing for the IETF what _Silverlock_ did for filk. It baps around collectivism, the principles of sovereignty, mutation theory, spy techniques, nanotechnology, Newtonian physics, kangaroo courts, secret police, and a character straight out of a Gilbert and Sullivan production. Oi vey!
I liked it. I'm looking forward to his next book A Lot. He will only get better.
This is a really cool project you might want to check out if you're interested in controlling the TiVo unit with a web browser rather than the standard remote control. i mean, sure the control is great and all, but i prefer a mouse:)
There are many things which are clearly "wrong" and which, therefore are not "right" regardless of the cause. I really don't think that "market forces" are a justification for filling your mailbox with as many penis-enlargment or "generic male enhancing formula" ads as possible.
Seriously, sometimes there are forces which drive me to run nearby vehicles off the road whilst on the freeway, but I find the human capacity to control myself for the greater good. Why can't we ask the same for spammers? Because they face absolutely no punishment or cost for their actions.
This is pretty much a continuation of a trend that began a few years ago. We see many embedded devices using open source, particularly linux. It makes sense for many reasons, but the bottom line is that open source is inexpensive (ie free?) and widely used, which makes development more efficient.
The really interesting thing, as I see it, is the integration we will be able to get when many devices run linux. I would love to be able to integrate my cell phone with my pda with my computer with my wireless access point. the possibilities are endless when we converge on common standards.
Isn't that a pretty huge conflict of interest? I honestly don't understand how someone from such a large corporation whose name is synonymous with monopoly can get one of its cronies into a position of authority at an unbiased organization.
The only thing I don't like about the process is the working conditions: annoyingly loud! For those of you that have never been in a clean room, there is a tremendous amount of ambient sound due to the very important air cleaning/circulation system. In order to make the clean room "clean", there can only be so much dust particles in the air. (e.g. 1ppm) (there are actually different classes of clean rooms)
The ramification of this is that one can hardly hear one's voice. Personally, I'm glad I'm not in the semiconductor field:)
Slashdot Mirror
what stops me, joe coder from hacking together my own open source p2p file sharing tool, to get around this? i mean look at gnutella for example. sure you can stop the big boys with targets on them, but it will be impossible to make a program which doesn't have said functionality cease to exist.
:)
you can't make information "not exist"
this is not a fascinating new discovery in probability theory, though they make it sound that way. of course when you flip a coin it can be biased if you can influence the number of spins. But after a certain number of spins, it might as well be random since you have less control over it.
move along, move along.
Essentially you're right, but you're kind of looking at it the wrong way. It is an LC circuit, but there isn't a coil or capacitor in the discrete component sense. Take a look at the device that you get from Barnes & Noble or in a CD case. It looks like a wire that is configured in a spiral. HMMMM
Now that's an LC circuit (if you want to think of it like that), but must people think of it as an antenna. I've never found out exactly how these systems work, but I imagine that they emit some RF and listen for some type of scattering from the device. When an EM wave impinges on some material, some of it will be reradiated in the scattered field. I'm willing to bet (but admit i could well be wrong,please correct me) there's some kind of nonlinearity which emits/scatters a distinguishible signal of different frequency. Otherwise you'd have to use atime-domain technique to "look for" the scattered signal (must differentiate between what you're transmitting and receiving).
i don't think i'm alone in not getting that one.
well yeah, theoretically in a market the price will be exactly how much people are willing to pay for agood or service.
what makes auctions interesting is that usually with used equipment it will be discounted to reflect depreciation and the fact that it is obviously "not new"(this is attractive to some people for subjective reasons).
And your reference to ebay is really half the story. I've bought a number of things on eBay which were great items, equivalent to a new item but for significantly less. the point i was trying to make was that these people were extraordinarily dumb in that they would pay "new" prices for "used" items. the fact taht enron had so many to give away seemed to insinuate an "everything must go" sort of desperation, which was clearly not the case (but insinuating that worked excellently well to attract bidders).
if only they had realized that there was no incentive to purchase at the auction. Many of those auctions are "as-is", you know, and so you couldn't have the service possible from a retail store (eg being able to return a defective unit).
I participated in the Enron auction, and let me tell you it was utterly a waste of time. The prices really were hardly less than retail value, and considering that the equipment was used (i was mostly interested in computers and lcd's) it was overpriced. What you had were lots of dumb folks out there that jacked up the prices so that nothing was really all that good of a deal or anything to be surprised about. I swear there were used 15" LCD's going for $4-500. You could buy one from BestBuy for that price last year.
I'm just really skeptical about these auctions. I found that it really wasn't worth the effort of getting registered, calling in, etc.
Mumbai Computer Gaming Concern.
okay i admit it...
but seriously, this is a weakness of the slashdot system. i'm just trying to expose it and make it open for everyone to see.
it is also somewhat entertaining to see the moderators mod you up for something worthless, while MANY good comments are ignored or marked as flamebait due to non-conformity.
seriously.
your post would be something more than flamebait if i hadn't WRITTEN THAT ARTICLE, punk.
According to the information published by different media, Wireless USB will support up to 480Mb/s transfer speed over 4 meters and up to 110Mb/s over 10 meters.
Wireless USB will be based on the multi-band OFDM technology backed by an industry alliance that includes Intel. It also blends in the common UWB radio platform defined by the WiMedia alliance. The UWB and wireless USB specifications are in the early stages of definition. Systems using wireless USB are not expected to ship until sometime in 2005, CommsDesign web-site notes.
I've been doing this for a while, and I've known a few guys to get busted, but mostly it's unenforceable as it is. Why not make the law reflect that?
If you chose to operate an FM transmitter outside these parameters, you would be considered a "pirate" in the eyes of the FCC, and you can be discovered, even though these rules are enforced unevenly. Sometimes a 1 watt station goes unnoticed by local licensed broadcasters, so a complaint is never filed and the FCC never finds out about it. Anecdotally, we have also heard of cases where FCC agents have turned a blind eye to 1 to 3 watt stations, if it seemed like they were not bothering any licensed broadcasters. At this level, despite operating at up to 75 times the legal limit, the actual power is so minuscule that the agent decided not to pursue the case. (This is akin to a cop pulling you over for speeding, but deciding to not give you the ticket because they think you're cute. You may be able to get away with it, but let no one fool you into thinking that it is actually legal.)
Some members of Prometheus Radio Radio Project were involved in pirate broadcasting. We did this because we believed that the broadcast regulations of this country are fundamentally unfair. We ran great community radio stations in defiance of the wealth-based structure of our broadcast system. The FCC eventually confiscated our stations, but announced that they had gotten the message of our -civil disobedience and that they were going to create a legalized low power fm radio service. We decided to stop pirating and work with the FCC to build a permanent new community radio service for this country. There is still a movement of unlicensed pirate stations that continues to operate in defiance of the broadcast regulations, which truthfully have only gotten slightly better as a result of LPFM. Morally we are sympathetic to these operations, but from a practical standpoint we do not devote our work to assisting them. We focus our efforts on the stations that are going to be able to become permanent fixtures in their communities, that are able to serve diverse communities because no one needs to worry about having their door busted down for operating without a license.
Film Firms Fight to Stay Afloat
By Kari L. Dean
02:00 AM Feb. 19, 2004 PT
Traditional film is moving swiftly toward antiquity, about to be shelved as quaintly as Selectric typewriter ribbon. But with more than half of amateur and professional photographers still attached to 35-mm cameras, the film industry isn't ready to pronounce the medium dead.
Instead, amid layoffs and slipping sales, film companies are struggling to keep the ailing industry alive.
Symptoms of illness abound. Two weeks ago, Eastman Kodak said it will lay off 15,000 workers employed in its core film business. A few months earlier, Kodak's chief executive unveiled, perhaps belatedly, a digitally oriented strategy to spur growth. No. 2 film manufacturer Fujifilm did the same.
Underscoring the urgency behind such announcements, last month the Photography Marketing Association, or PMA, reported that in 2003, digital cameras outsold traditional cameras for the first time. In addition, the group said film sales and processing revenue declined from the prior year.
But industry leaders aren't giving up on film. In a surprising turn this week, Kodak announced plans for new film-processing retail kiosks to sit beside their digital counterparts. Eliminating the in-about-an-hour middleman, customers can process and print their own photos from 35-mm film in about seven minutes. The kiosks also enable customers to select and print only the photos they want, in whichever sizes they want, much like a digital camera.
"Let the consumer decide what the consumer wants," said Kodak spokesman Gerard Meuchner. "If they want to use film, let them use film."
Meanwhile, in Las Vegas this week, attendees at the PMA's annual convention saw Fujifilm introduce three new 35-mm cameras alongside four new digital cameras. The company also announced that it is "defying current trends in the photography industry by announcing significant investment in film camera technology in 2004."
In truth, although the PMA projects digital-camera penetration to surpass 42 percent of households in 2004, that still leaves 58 percent without one. Kodak's Meuchner attributes the ratio to the slow acceptance of digital by the biggest picture-takers of all: moms.
"Mothers with children take the most pictures and have the least amount of time," Meuchner said. "But they aren't early adopters."
But even among this group, film consumption is on the wane. The PMA reports that mothers with young children are quickly becoming the most common owners of digital cameras. So while the lone bright spot for traditional film might have been the increasing sales of the mom-friendly disposable camera -- up by 7 percent in 2003 and projected to rise another 5 percent in 2004 -- even that light is dimming.
As shutter-happy parents go digital, an array of other film users -- health-imaging specialists, professional photographers, artists -- are left to keep the industry alive.
According to a 2003 survey by the Professional Photographers of America, or PPA, just 52 percent of the group's members used digital as their primary means of capturing images. But 86 percent of PPA members were using at least partial digital technology in creating finished photographs.
oth Kodak and Fujifilm are positioning their film-focused entries around convenience and ease of use -- the same benefits used to lure consumers to digital. That choice of strategy might be the only one left as the long-debated quality issue between film and digital becomes increasingly moot: Some professional photographers now claim that large photographic prints from 20-megapixel cameras or camera backs -- attachments that let film cameras take digital images -- are virtually indistinguishable from images captured on 35-mm film.
"Newer cameras and digital backs have the higher quality, resolution and pixel count that have allowed portrait and wedding photographers to switch over," said PPA chairman Steve Best, who says he is a completely digital
I blazed through this book. It is playful, irreverent, consumed by more raw ideas and imaginative takes on traditional scifi tropes than I've seen in a dog's age. And it contains the most vivid spaceship command deck combat dialogue I've ever read. If you enjoy the occasional fat mouthful of jargon, you're going to find yourself chewing vigorously throughout Singularity Sky.
Mr. Stross is obviously having more fun in some parts of his writing than others, which while noticable, isn't fatal. I think the other reviewers should give this book another read without their Clarion baseball hats on, or at least with them loosened a few notches. Perfection isn't required for enjoyment - just energy and novelty. Maybe they were dissatisfied at the denouement to the Big Space Battle, but that was the point - sometimes, you don't get the lollypop.
Singularity Sky is about *bigness*, like John Clute's _Appleseed_, but more accessbile. It's full of little in-jokes and sly tech-culture references, doing for the IETF what _Silverlock_ did for filk. It baps around collectivism, the principles of sovereignty, mutation theory, spy techniques, nanotechnology, Newtonian physics, kangaroo courts, secret police, and a character straight out of a Gilbert and Sullivan production. Oi vey!
I liked it. I'm looking forward to his next book A Lot. He will only get better.
This is a really cool project you might want to check out if you're interested in controlling the TiVo unit with a web browser rather than the standard remote control. i mean, sure the control is great and all, but i prefer a mouse :)
see here.
There are many things which are clearly "wrong" and which, therefore are not "right" regardless of the cause. I really don't think that "market forces" are a justification for filling your mailbox with as many penis-enlargment or "generic male enhancing formula" ads as possible.
Seriously, sometimes there are forces which drive me to run nearby vehicles off the road whilst on the freeway, but I find the human capacity to control myself for the greater good. Why can't we ask the same for spammers? Because they face absolutely no punishment or cost for their actions.
This is pretty much a continuation of a trend that began a few years ago. We see many embedded devices using open source, particularly linux. It makes sense for many reasons, but the bottom line is that open source is inexpensive (ie free?) and widely used, which makes development more efficient.
The really interesting thing, as I see it, is the integration we will be able to get when many devices run linux. I would love to be able to integrate my cell phone with my pda with my computer with my wireless access point. the possibilities are endless when we converge on common standards.
Isn't that a pretty huge conflict of interest? I honestly don't understand how someone from such a large corporation whose name is synonymous with monopoly can get one of its cronies into a position of authority at an unbiased organization.
Does this strike a bad nerve with anyone else?
I LeArN3d 4ll mah SkillZ OnliNe. it iz teh b3sT wAy d00d!!!
I would also recommend the title by the same author, "The Troll Underground", which highlights the life of the Slashdot troll
I have linked MyDoom to SCO and Microsoft as well.
I have also linked Saddam Hussein to Iraq and the BBC to Great Britain.
I am very good at linking.
Skull & Bones members with insider connections to the RIAA have received copies of every commercial CD for Yale students at no charge.
I smell a big fat commie-err-Yalie plot.
Lawrence Lessig's response:
"EEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH"
hmmm darn caps filter hehehe
leave it to slashdot to do it again today with monster truck force!!
The only thing I don't like about the process is the working conditions: annoyingly loud!
:)
For those of you that have never been in a clean room, there is a tremendous amount of ambient sound due to the very important air cleaning/circulation system. In order to make the clean room "clean", there can only be so much dust particles in the air. (e.g. 1ppm) (there are actually different classes of clean rooms)
The ramification of this is that one can hardly hear one's voice. Personally, I'm glad I'm not in the semiconductor field
Bob Cringely has a good article on this as well, aptly titled "It's our own damn fault".
Also, from another perspective is this article from the India Times