Well, yeah. This was 1993, Usenet basically was the entire fucking Internet. At least the part of it used to socialise and communicate with peers. The world wide web was only starting to take off. The W3C history of the web notes for October '93: "Over 200 known HTTP servers." Wahey.:)
Oh god, what has he done to the poor woman on the office CD? And, conversely, what (who?) is she crushing with her hands? Well I guess it's better than being drugged by this freak.
The real wildcard though is the source of the electricity. In this case it is clean, geothermal energy, though it could be solar, wind, etc. If you used fossil fuels, you would have the same problem as we have today but worse because of poor efficiency of the hydrolysis process.
Hear hear! A lot of people miss this, eg. some of the posters above calling it a "clean energy source". It's not an energy source, at least not if the Hydrogen is created using eletrolysis. In that case it's just a battery. I'm not sure whether using it without electrolysis is viable - that Hydrogen has to come from somewhere, after all.
I don't think this will work, either, but I think your reasoning is a bit off. Obviously powering a cell phone won't work in the same way as those wrist watches work, but that's kind of the point: there's a new technology converting vibration into electrical energy. Those wrist watches do something similar, but in a different way (I'm studying CS not EE, I don't know any specifics).
There are vibrations to convert, not the ones the article refers to (which is fairly ridiculous) but rather the ones generated by carrying around your cell phone with you. The traditional, "wrist" way might not be able to tap that "source" of energy, but this new tech might.
Finally, this obviously could be used as an additional source of energy. There would still need to be a battery, and there could still be a charger to recharge the battery from mains power. So no constant moving required.
However, at least judging by the article, this still wouldn't work. Cell phones are designed to work with hardly any energy, but it does seem that this technology can only generate very minute amounts of energy, too - enough to power a sensor or an LED, but probably not enough to considerably prolongue a cell phones battery life. Certainly not enough to justify the added technology this would require.
However, for the current discussion, the two are quite synonymous. If you have a look at popular dictionary definitions, eg. in the American Heritage Dictionary, you will find that both words have different meanings ranging from very general to very specific, and share nearly all of the more general meanings.
Of course, you may use either word if you prefer. I'm not sure whether the political system of the Weimar Republic (that last "Republic" is just a name!) is more correctly described as being a democracy or a republic, though.
Perhabs Hitler's takeover of the Weimar Republic, which was a modern democracy, converting into an absolutist fascist regime in 1933 could be called a revolution. It was very much inside the system, though, it was not a violent public uprise.
Apart from that, the couple of modern democracies - including first and foremost the USA, the right to bear arms nonwithstanding - have taken great care to keep up a large enough and well-equipped military to prevent a public, violent revolution from happening. And of course, in a working democracy, a revolution is made unlikely since the majority gets what it wants anyway.
You're right, my reaction was inappropriate. I apologise.
I do disagree with many things your are saying and also your somewhat condescending attitude, and I stand by my original point (minus the generalisations and the offense). However, I am not about to discuss this matter in a backwater thread on an old Slashdot news item, especially not with an Anonymous Coward who is as likely to read (much less respond to) anything I write as he is not. Nice write-up, though, I hope you didn't copy/paste it from somewhere. If you do wish do continue this discussion in a non-Anonymous environment, well, I'm not an AC, the UIN I entered works, and finding out my email address is trivial if you use my nickname. (Apparently it's not linked to on my "homepage", jeez.)
Note that Knoppix is way less idealistic than Debian. It's main author, Klaus Knopper, has stated several times - I've followed the discussion - that he always uses GPL'd software if possible, but he also includes freely distributable closed-source (ie. free as in beer; Freeware) software in his distribution. I don't have any examples (don't use Knoppix) and maybe he has found adequate free as in speech alternatives by now, but he's taken a strictly pragmatic approach. I'm neither critisizing nor applauding him for that, incidently.
Once the idiot put my friends' kids in harm's way, I had to support them, and hope for their successful and safe return home.
No, you don't. That is, of course you have to hope for their safe return, but you certainly don't have to "support them" if by "support them" you mean "agree to fighting a war". Quite to the contrary, in fact. I don't understand where this idea of obedience comes from. Must be an American thing.
If they offer non-DRM caopies of the songs for download, these will just be made available for free, so most people still won;t pay.
"Most", you say. Well that's already a step in the right direction, isn't it. The industry should do what Loosewire says. There are lots of things to entice people from moving from the current crop of P2P applications to the industries legal alternatives (which might or might not be P2P):
- legality!
- ease of use - already Kazaa, especially, is already extremely easy to use; but it can be (and is being) improved by getting rid of ads, spyware - better quality (high bitrate or lossless) music - fast speed, no waiting time downloads - added value such as song texts or band info integrated into the client - and so on, I think most people who pirate music now could come up with any number of improvements, many of which remain infeasible because of the underground nature of the scene.
That's where the room for improvement is, do stuff P2P can't do. If there was a service offering something tangible over P2P, people would use it. What won't work is offering considerably less and then charging for it, with the only added benefit is legalily. Well people like doing stuff legally, but they don't like it that much.
Ever heard of laptops? A laptop is a portable computer, including an LCD as a video output device. Last I heard, they manage an uptime of two to three hourse, more in some cases - and keep in mind, they need to power other components as well, such as the CPU and keep the hard drive spinning.;)
I apologise for my sarcasm, but obviously this is feasible, since it has been done before countless times.:) I don't know how much battery time is in such a TV, but with a normal laptop battery, 4 hours seem completely possible. And you should watch more TV than that, anyway.;)
Just to add to what I said, since in the end it sounded as if I was implying that 2.4 GHz is always superior to 5 GHZ:
2.4 GHz transmission does, indeed, propagate better than 5 GHz, if it wasn't for the considerable existing sources of 2.4 GHz radiation - lots and lots of stuff uses 2.4, as the original poster pointed out, including microwave ovens. So if you're in a interference rich environment, 5 GHz might work better than 2.4 GHz. This is all covered in the article I linked to, incidently.
Yes, it is because it is - along with 5 Ghz and a couple of more frequencies - unregulated (or minimally regulated for commercial and scientific use. 5 Ghz, according to this excellent article on Dan's Data is "inherently even less able to deal with propagation obstacles than 2.4GHz".
Just tried Vera Mono, but I'm back to Lucida Console. I don't know how anyone could stand it as an editor font, I think it's pretty horrible at 8 pt. It might be Windows XP's font rendering, but Lucida just appears so much clearer.
People keep saying that the USA's cell phone network is inferior to the European, but it sure seems that T-Mobile - a German company, no less - is charging a whole lot more in its country of origin. I don't think there's any free nights and weekends plan with any of the large 3 or 4 providers, and no unlimited data, either.
Short jargon file entry on it. If you're bored some day, be sure to read the report/short story on phreaking in the anarchists's cookbook, it's quite entertaining.
phreaking
/freek'ing/ [from `phone phreak'] n. 1. The art and science of cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls). 2. By extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially, but not exclusively, on communications networks) (see {cracking}).
At one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers; there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an intellectual game and a form of exploration was OK, but serious theft of services was taboo. There was significant crossover between the hacker community and the hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground networks of their own through such media as the legendary "TAP Newsletter". This ethos began to break down in the mid-1980s as wider dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of less responsible phreaks. Around the same time, changes in the phone network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way of hacking it, so phreaking came to depend more on overtly criminal acts such as stealing phone-card numbers. The crimes and punishments of gangs like the `414 group' turned that game very ugly. A few old-time hackers still phreak casually just to keep their hand in, but most these days have hardly even heard of `blue boxes' or any of the other paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore.
It's actually decently usable over dialup, even though it obviously smokes over broadband.
Considering how PDA real-time access to your desktop makes the most sense on the go, and disregarding the cost for the moment, I see many people using this over their cell phone internet links, which means slow. There have been advancements in the mobile internet access speeds, but it's still as slow or slower than dial-up for some, not to mention the horrible latency and packet loss inherent to wireless links. The software mentioned in the articles is supposed to work very well over dial-up and cell phone connections, which, according to you, RDP is not designed for. I'm a bit ambiguous if this is actually true, and I doubt it is in fact very snappy over a cell phone link, but it's possibly better at it than existing "thin client" remote desktop software.
Of course, you still have a point, and I, too, was surprised to see the Reg pimping this as if it was something utterly revolutionary and unseen - the X windowing system is how many years old, again?
Those no-server TOS are a joke, anyway. I mean, what qualifies as a server? Apache probably does. Does an Apache modified to only allow access to a small number of people? Does a similarily restricted ftpd? Okay, so how about ICQ? It's a client to the ICQ network, but it's kind of a hybrid, as it responds to requests of other clients, as well. IRC/DCC? Most/All of the P2P programs are client/server hybrids. What about game servers - I can't host a match of Age Of Kings for my friends?
So, really, those TOS are a joke. A bit OT, all of this, I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yeah. This was 1993, Usenet basically was the entire fucking Internet. At least the part of it used to socialise and communicate with peers. The world wide web was only starting to take off. The W3C history of the web notes for October '93: "Over 200 known HTTP servers." Wahey. :)
Oh god, what has he done to the poor woman on the office CD? And, conversely, what (who?) is she crushing with her hands? Well I guess it's better than being drugged by this freak.
Actually, it is you who is nitpicking. Might want to look up on the appropriate use of formal scientific terms.
It should, yes, but that alone probably would not be worth the effort involved in integrating this into cell phones.
(I just searched Google for "Neitzche". 2,020 results, nearly all of them misspellings of the philosopher's name. Sad.)
There are vibrations to convert, not the ones the article refers to (which is fairly ridiculous) but rather the ones generated by carrying around your cell phone with you. The traditional, "wrist" way might not be able to tap that "source" of energy, but this new tech might.
Finally, this obviously could be used as an additional source of energy. There would still need to be a battery, and there could still be a charger to recharge the battery from mains power. So no constant moving required.
However, at least judging by the article, this still wouldn't work. Cell phones are designed to work with hardly any energy, but it does seem that this technology can only generate very minute amounts of energy, too - enough to power a sensor or an LED, but probably not enough to considerably prolongue a cell phones battery life. Certainly not enough to justify the added technology this would require.
However, for the current discussion, the two are quite synonymous. If you have a look at popular dictionary definitions, eg. in the American Heritage Dictionary, you will find that both words have different meanings ranging from very general to very specific, and share nearly all of the more general meanings.
Of course, you may use either word if you prefer. I'm not sure whether the political system of the Weimar Republic (that last "Republic" is just a name!) is more correctly described as being a democracy or a republic, though.
Apart from that, the couple of modern democracies - including first and foremost the USA, the right to bear arms nonwithstanding - have taken great care to keep up a large enough and well-equipped military to prevent a public, violent revolution from happening. And of course, in a working democracy, a revolution is made unlikely since the majority gets what it wants anyway.
You're right, my reaction was inappropriate. I apologise.
I do disagree with many things your are saying and also your somewhat condescending attitude, and I stand by my original point (minus the generalisations and the offense). However, I am not about to discuss this matter in a backwater thread on an old Slashdot news item, especially not with an Anonymous Coward who is as likely to read (much less respond to) anything I write as he is not.
Nice write-up, though, I hope you didn't copy/paste it from somewhere. If you do wish do continue this discussion in a non-Anonymous environment, well, I'm not an AC, the UIN I entered works, and finding out my email address is trivial if you use my nickname. (Apparently it's not linked to on my "homepage", jeez.)
Note that Knoppix is way less idealistic than Debian. It's main author, Klaus Knopper, has stated several times - I've followed the discussion - that he always uses GPL'd software if possible, but he also includes freely distributable closed-source (ie. free as in beer; Freeware) software in his distribution. I don't have any examples (don't use Knoppix) and maybe he has found adequate free as in speech alternatives by now, but he's taken a strictly pragmatic approach.
I'm neither critisizing nor applauding him for that, incidently.
- legality!
- ease of use - already Kazaa, especially, is already extremely easy to use; but it can be (and is being) improved by getting rid of ads, spyware
- better quality (high bitrate or lossless) music
- fast speed, no waiting time downloads
- added value such as song texts or band info integrated into the client
- and so on, I think most people who pirate music now could come up with any number of improvements, many of which remain infeasible because of the underground nature of the scene.
That's where the room for improvement is, do stuff P2P can't do. If there was a service offering something tangible over P2P, people would use it. What won't work is offering considerably less and then charging for it, with the only added benefit is legalily. Well people like doing stuff legally, but they don't like it that much.
I apologise for my sarcasm, but obviously this is feasible, since it has been done before countless times. :) I don't know how much battery time is in such a TV, but with a normal laptop battery, 4 hours seem completely possible. And you should watch more TV than that, anyway. ;)
2.4 GHz transmission does, indeed, propagate better than 5 GHz, if it wasn't for the considerable existing sources of 2.4 GHz radiation - lots and lots of stuff uses 2.4, as the original poster pointed out, including microwave ovens. So if you're in a interference rich environment, 5 GHz might work better than 2.4 GHz. This is all covered in the article I linked to, incidently.
Yes, it is because it is - along with 5 Ghz and a couple of more frequencies - unregulated (or minimally regulated for commercial and scientific use. 5 Ghz, according to this excellent article on Dan's Data is "inherently even less able to deal with propagation obstacles than 2.4GHz".
Just tried Vera Mono, but I'm back to Lucida Console. I don't know how anyone could stand it as an editor font, I think it's pretty horrible at 8 pt. It might be Windows XP's font rendering, but Lucida just appears so much clearer.
That's just the Texan reaction to anything. "Would you marry me?" -- *BAM*
People keep saying that the USA's cell phone network is inferior to the European, but it sure seems that T-Mobile - a German company, no less - is charging a whole lot more in its country of origin. I don't think there's any free nights and weekends plan with any of the large 3 or 4 providers, and no unlimited data, either.
*sigh*
phreaking
/freek'ing/ [from `phone phreak'] n. 1. The art and science of cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls). 2. By extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially, but not exclusively, on communications networks) (see {cracking}).
At one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers; there was a gentleman's agreement that phreaking as an intellectual game and a form of exploration was OK, but serious theft of services was taboo. There was significant crossover between the hacker community and the hard-core phone phreaks who ran semi-underground networks of their own through such media as the legendary "TAP Newsletter". This ethos began to break down in the mid-1980s as wider dissemination of the techniques put them in the hands of less responsible phreaks. Around the same time, changes in the phone network made old-style technical ingenuity less effective as a way of hacking it, so phreaking came to depend more on overtly criminal acts such as stealing phone-card numbers. The crimes and punishments of gangs like the `414 group' turned that game very ugly. A few old-time hackers still phreak casually just to keep their hand in, but most these days have hardly even heard of `blue boxes' or any of the other paraphernalia of the great phreaks of yore.
Of course, you still have a point, and I, too, was surprised to see the Reg pimping this as if it was something utterly revolutionary and unseen - the X windowing system is how many years old, again?
You're right. Adjusting it now. Thanks!
What about game servers - I can't host a match of Age Of Kings for my friends?
So, really, those TOS are a joke. A bit OT, all of this, I guess.