[tt]Optical fibres currently do the boring legwork in telecommunications. Soon these light-filled strands may play a more active role. Researchers at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, have created optical fibres that can be switched between different states that transmit light of different colours1. These fibres can process signals as well as carry them.
Devised by John Rogers and his colleagues, the new fibres are hollow. Perforated with channels thousandths of a millimetre across, each fibre looks like a bundle of drinking straws. Their tunable behaviour comes from plugs of fluid within that can be pumped back and forth.
These 'microfluidic fibres' combine the cheapness and robustness of conventional fibre optics with the functionality of more complex and expensive devices. Currently, when switches or transistors are installed midway along the length of a fibre, they can end up buried and inaccessible along underground or seafloor transmission lines. Breakdowns in such cases are understandably costly.
Wavelength-division multiplexing, for instance, is a common way of sending many optical signals down a single fibre simultaneously. Different signals, encoded in light beams of different colours, are unravelled at the receiving end using special filters or light sensors.
Microfluidic fibres could act as both transmission channel and filter, and could be switched to relay first one signal and then another - without all the separate paraphernalia that is otherwise needed to decode the signals.
The fluid plugs alter the fibres' light-conducting behaviour. Light travelling through the fibres' solid glass core changes when it passes through a region surrounded by fluid. Under certain conditions, this can make the fibre relatively opaque to light of a narrow band of wavelengths, so that the fibre filters it out.
The filtered wavelength can be tuned by altering the temperature of the fluid; this is done by a tiny electrical 'heater' wrapped like a sleeve around a short section of the fibre. The wavelength and attenuation of the filtering can be controlled using a second heater further down the fibre, to warm up the air in the channels. This pumps the liquid plugs further inside or outside the region where they become active as filters.
Rogers and colleagues anticipate that other arrangements of fluid plugs, heaters, pumps and so on will fulfil a variety of other functions that are needed in optical-fibre communication networks.
References Mach, P. et al. Tunable microfluidic optical fiber. Applied Physics Letters, 80, 4294 - 4296, (2002).
[/tt]
Charter Communications here (Saginaw, Michigan) isn't real reliable.
It was down from 8:00am to 4:30pm yesterday.
It was down for almost an hour this morning. Our cable modem goes offline about 2 times a week, requiring me to go in the back and unplug it, wait 30 seconds, and plug it back in.
What we later discovered was that she'd only closed down a few of the webserver's non-essential ports and had done nothing about the Linksys firewall situation
She? You have a whole different problem. You should be nailing this grrl geek!
SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment America - the same corporation responsible for the PC version six month delay and no PC version of GTA:Vice) announced yesterday at their E3 press conference that GTA3 will take another stab in the back as far as getting onto other platforms. GTA3:XBOX won't be happening this year after all. Due to the contract between SCEA and Take-Two (the parent company of RockStar Games), RockStar are not allowed to publish GTA3 for any console other than the PS2 for three years since the agreement in 2001.
Starting nmap V. 2.11 by Fyodor (fyodor@dhp.com, www.insecure.org/nmap/) Interesting ports on adsl-78-196-1.sdf.bellsouth.net (216.78.196.1): Port State Protocol Service 23 open tcp telnet
Interesting ports on adsl-78-196-2.sdf.bellsouth.net (216.78.196.2): Port State Protocol Service 23 open tcp telnet
. . .
Shit! My ISP just called and shut me down!
Stupid lameness filter....junk characters? The funny thing is, a large amount of Cable/DSL/ISDN providers do this.
You can always telnet into a ISDN router, change the phone numbers of the ISP to, say '911' or your favorite FBI office, and then disconnect, and then the ISDN device will be dialing up numbers!
You can still pirate the video. If a movie is 2 bucks, or a download, I'm going to do that, instead of buying the DVD for $20. A little quality isn't THAT big of a deal.
Slashdot Mirror
[tt]Optical fibres currently do the boring legwork in telecommunications. Soon these light-filled strands may play a more active role. Researchers at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, have created optical fibres that can be switched between different states that transmit light of different colours1. These fibres can process signals as well as carry them.
Devised by John Rogers and his colleagues, the new fibres are hollow. Perforated with channels thousandths of a millimetre across, each fibre looks like a bundle of drinking straws. Their tunable behaviour comes from plugs of fluid within that can be pumped back and forth.
These 'microfluidic fibres' combine the cheapness and robustness of conventional fibre optics with the functionality of more complex and expensive devices. Currently, when switches or transistors are installed midway along the length of a fibre, they can end up buried and inaccessible along underground or seafloor transmission lines. Breakdowns in such cases are understandably costly.
Wavelength-division multiplexing, for instance, is a common way of sending many optical signals down a single fibre simultaneously. Different signals, encoded in light beams of different colours, are unravelled at the receiving end using special filters or light sensors.
Microfluidic fibres could act as both transmission channel and filter, and could be switched to relay first one signal and then another - without all the separate paraphernalia that is otherwise needed to decode the signals.
The fluid plugs alter the fibres' light-conducting behaviour. Light travelling through the fibres' solid glass core changes when it passes through a region surrounded by fluid. Under certain conditions, this can make the fibre relatively opaque to light of a narrow band of wavelengths, so that the fibre filters it out.
The filtered wavelength can be tuned by altering the temperature of the fluid; this is done by a tiny electrical 'heater' wrapped like a sleeve around a short section of the fibre. The wavelength and attenuation of the filtering can be controlled using a second heater further down the fibre, to warm up the air in the channels. This pumps the liquid plugs further inside or outside the region where they become active as filters.
Rogers and colleagues anticipate that other arrangements of fluid plugs, heaters, pumps and so on will fulfil a variety of other functions that are needed in optical-fibre communication networks.
References
Mach, P. et al. Tunable microfluidic optical fiber. Applied Physics Letters, 80, 4294 - 4296, (2002).
[/tt]
Well?
You're not getting the full picture.
More Eyeballs != More Programmers
More Eyballs DOES equal, more beta testers, more users, more people 'eyeballing' the code and suggesting improvements.
ONE person can't do everything, but he can write most of the code.
Who the hell uses Gopher anymore, especialy 'doze newbies?
9 years ago you ran Windows 95?
If you don't understand either one, take a look
here:
[i]The webserver is running on the Linux box. We need a new server, as the old one is about to die [/i]
/.!
Duh, you just linked to your page from
Make Money?
Open Source?
Game Development?
LOL
LOL - Where are my mod points!?
The school I used to work for shouldn't have got mad when I sold their servers on eBay...
(It's funny because Government and schools bid out their...nevermind)
8mb 386 running Windows?
Hah
running 3.1 is a joke on that system
Give it a rest, quit using yard-sale hardware
Charter Communications here (Saginaw, Michigan) isn't real reliable.
It was down from 8:00am to 4:30pm yesterday.
It was down for almost an hour this morning. Our cable modem goes offline about 2 times a week, requiring me to go in the back and unplug it, wait 30 seconds, and plug it back in.
Grr!
Whats all this jazz about Amazon running on Linux?
I remember how big robotics was supposed to become, and how they would replace all our industrial workers...
How many robot companies went belly up from 1980-early 90's?
Early during highschool when I was playing quite a bit, I started having serious wrist problems.
Wrist problems in high school? What ELSE were you doing a lot of?
Ford's releasing a kit for its newest Taurus allows you to easily install a Toyota or other competitors engine or transmission!
How about Lego software so kids can build virtual structures?
You can't step on a piece with your bare foot, put pieces in your mouth, and your dog can't accidently crush your 4-day project.
1997, anyone?
Not Space Marine Doom
Can you say the latest linux ISO's?
Next round up, they'll say screw making consoles, and just make software....
What we later discovered was that she'd only closed down a few of the webserver's non-essential ports and had done nothing about the Linksys firewall situation
She? You have a whole different problem. You should be nailing this grrl geek!
That's right XBOX fans - No GTA3 until 2004.
SCEA (Sony Computer Entertainment America - the same corporation responsible for the PC version six month delay and no PC version of GTA:Vice) announced yesterday at their E3 press conference that GTA3 will take another stab in the back as far as getting onto other platforms. GTA3:XBOX won't be happening this year after all. Due to the contract between SCEA and Take-Two (the parent company of RockStar Games), RockStar are not allowed to publish GTA3 for any console other than the PS2 for three years since the agreement in 2001.
[ryu@linus
Starting nmap V. 2.11 by Fyodor (fyodor@dhp.com, www.insecure.org/nmap/)
Interesting ports on adsl-78-196-1.sdf.bellsouth.net (216.78.196.1):
Port State Protocol Service
23 open tcp telnet
Interesting ports on adsl-78-196-2.sdf.bellsouth.net (216.78.196.2):
Port State Protocol Service
23 open tcp telnet
.
.
.
Shit! My ISP just called and shut me down!
Stupid lameness filter....junk characters? The funny thing is, a large amount of Cable/DSL/ISDN providers do this.
You can always telnet into a ISDN router, change the phone numbers of the ISP to, say '911' or your favorite FBI office, and then disconnect, and then the ISDN device will be dialing up numbers!
I liked it. I'd love for it to be a giant multiplayer frag fest, though
You can still pirate the video. If a movie is 2 bucks, or a download, I'm going to do that, instead of buying the DVD for $20. A little quality isn't THAT big of a deal.
Photos.
Photos.
Video editing.
I've got like 6 gigs of music, which is a fraction of my hard drive space. But, it's a quite large amount of songs.