If you think about it, if someone is trying to get a hold of you why should they have to try several distinct numbers and addresses? Doesn't it make sense to have just one, and information gets routed to the appropriate interface (phone, e-mail, IM, etc.)?
I would like to be able to change my email address without changing my phone number. You think spam is bad now? Consider how bad it'll be if you have one universal address. As soon as you get into the system, you're toast. The only way to stop the 100 message a day flood will be to change your universal phone/email number.
File Maker Pro, Oricle, Sybase, and all the others mentioned by you, Scott, and the others are PLATFORMS. They are used to write software and store data.
I'm talking about the software that the end user sees -- something like ACCPAC, SBT, Radio Beacon, and dozens of other pieces of business software that are written using databases like Oricle, Sybase, and Visual Foxpro, and in languages like Visual Basic, Powerbuilder, and Visual Foxpro (yes, VFP is both a database system *and* a programming language.)
That's fine if all you want to do is desktop publishing, spreadsheets, and other standardized off-the-shelf software.
If you need heavy accounting, point-of-sale, warehouse management, inventory management, sales orders, receivables, payables, or other business-type software, you will find that most of the available software is Unix (generally high-end -- millions of bucks) and Windows (may be in the low thousands of dollars, or all the way up to the millions of dollars).
In the past fifteen years, most of the money I have made came from modifying existing software -- taking something that starts at a few thousand dollars a module (with perhaps ten modules available), and adding tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of modifications. If the clients had wanted a totally custom solution, it would have cost them much more.
If the client chooses the Mac, they will most likely have to go with totally custom software written in whatever language and database engine happens to be in style at the moment. There simply isn't that much sophisticated (we're not talking about peachtree here) software out there that runs on the Mac.
Still, they would probably end up with the same problems because the difficulties mentioned in the article have to do with the software itself, not the hardware or operating system.
Am I correct in understanding that lightbulbs contain a vacuum or at least a different air pressure? If so, can I take that comment to mean that they can create a vacuum inside the printed lightbulb, or is that a seperate process?
I can't imagine why someone would want to print an incondescent light bulb. The printer would be used to print organic LEDs (OLEDs).
In fact, if you buy the wide-carriage version, you can print a really big OLED monitor. Anyone want a wide-screen 17 x 40 inch monitor?
The radiation mentioned in the article is just the emission of beta particles -- in other words, ordinary electrons. At the energy levels associated with atomic decays they would be stopped by a thick piece of paper, to say nothing of human skin.
Perhaps we should mention that beta radiation is exactly the same stuff that is used to paint the pretty picture on your standard boob-tube, computer (CRT) monitor, or whatever. The only difference is in the source -- it comes from an electron gun instead of a small quantity of tritium or whatever.
HAHAHA Thank God all the ships are not like the Erika.
FYPG, modern supertankers have double hulls, and in any case, using this passage would definitely increase A LOT the premium that the charterers have to pay for a tanker vessel to go into that kind of waters, i.e. breaking the "IWL" (insurance warranty limits).
So, don't worry, the penguins there won't have any bad "fuelly" surprise anytime soon.
Most of the ships that would eventually use this route are grain loaders from US Gulf to Asia, because the cost of Panama Canal tax has a great influence over the price of the freight... and anyways, it's only for 2 months, roughly the time for a long round voyage... very negligeable.
Actually, we have to worry about them spilling oil on the penguins now because they are going south around cape horn. If they take the Northwest Passage, they will be going through a penguin-free area.
Seriously, though, every mile they run involves some small risk. If you reduce the number of miles, you reduce the risk. Note: the above is a generalization. One would be hard-pressed to determine which is riskier, the Northwest Passage, or the Straits of Magellin.
The oceans are such a large thermal reservoir that the heating of the last half century is only barely perceptible in the expansion of the ocean. The best available evidence is that temperatures globally have been incredibly flat over the last 10000 years (end of the last ice age) up till 1900 or so.
That isn't true. You're forgetting about the mini ice age -- which many believe to be what knocked off the vikings.
If the temperatures jump even one degree Celsius and STAY that way, then the temperatures will gradually diffuse in the oceans over centuries until they reach a new equilibrium. A millenium from now when the entire ocean has warmed a fraction of a degree, the thermal expansion of the oceans will have raised sea levels 10-20 METERS.
Do you have some figures for that? You'll need to show me the math if you want me to believe it.
If you know the volume of the ocean, the surface area of the ocean, and the thermal coefficient of expansion of water, you can come up with a rough estimate.
Of course this assummes that we do nothing about global warming and simply bask in the warmth while the water rises. It starts at the surface, but if you keep things warm that warmth will saturate the ocean, it's just a matter of time.
I truly can't see us depending on fossil fuels for more than another century or so. For one thing, there simply isn't enough to keep up for much more than that. It's not like we're importing carbon from Triton or something. Everything we are putting into the atmosphere came from Earth in the first place, and was sequestered there back in ages gone by.
Another issue that people neglect to bring up is the enormity of the task of melting the great land-based ice shields. First, the temperature has to be above freezing for the ice to even start to melt, and it has to be well above freezing for the ice to melt fast enough to keep from being replaced by next winter's snow. One hundred years isn't going to do the job.
The 'higher' frequency that is mentioned in the article is the frequency at which new pressure samples are taken -- in this case, 1000 times per second. It is the approximate equivalent of the sampling rate of a sound file, or the frame rate of a video.
If you still want to use 802.11, it should be no trick at all to tuck the antenna behind some curtains by a window that faces the other building. Also, some stones are transparent to RF, so you might be able to send the signal right through the wall.
If all else fails, get on to an amateur radio newsgroup and ask about sneak antennas. Hams have been dealing with restrictive antenna ordinances for many decades.
Very interesting... it's been done
on
HighWLAN
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· Score: 4, Informative
The writer was very creative in his use of off-the-shelf equipment. His experiment is a good proof-of-concept.
Amateur (Ham) Radio Operators have been communicating via packet radio for something like twenty years. Since ham radios are used, the range is measured in miles rather than feet. The only drawback of that system is that the speed is limited to 1200 baud -- though higher baud rates are used on some of the higher bands. In fact, some hams use tcp/ip as their protocol (originally, packet radio used ax.25).
For more information, check out news:alt.ham-radio.packet.
Digital radio communication is actually much older than even packet radio. Technically, morse code is a digital medium. Somewhat later, baudot code was used, and hams communicated via RTTY (Radio Teletype). I'm not sure when the first RTTY station hit the air, but I suspect that it was in the 1940s or 1950s. Later, ASCII was used for RTTY, which had the advantage of lower-case letters and more characters.
Packet Radio became popular in the 1980s, and the innovative hams used it for emergency communications, bulliton boards, email, and vehicluar communication. Some attached GPS units to the TNCs (Terminal Node Controllers), so a central station could track several mobile units. This turned out to be very useful for "fox hunting" (searching for hidden transmitters), and the more serious searches for emergency locator beacons and for illegal transmitters.
The police have been using a form of packet radio for at least ten years, and probably for a whole lot longer (I saw one ten years ago). Rather than calling your license number into the dispacher, they can type it into the terminal and get a direct text reply.
The military also uses wireless digital communication. They used RTTY way back in the ancient times when I was serving (no, we didn't use flintlock rifles). I used to repair the encryption devices that secured the links.
The author expressed some doubt about securing a wireless link, but I am confident that any communication that the military is currently researching is well secured. They have been using crypto gear for a very long time. Rather than take a chance on being accused of divulging classified information, I will just suggest that you type "comsec crypto" into google and surf from there.
The point is that once you encrypt the data, you can send it over any channel you like without fear of eavesdroppers.
Incidentally, hacking the 802.11 box to produce more power is almost certainly illegal. The FCC takes a dim view of unlicenced people modifying type-accepted gear.
I haven't researched the issue, but I believe that a ham can legally modify an 802.11 box. I am quite sure that it is legal if the operating frequency is moved to one of the ham bands (I don't recall if it is already in a "shared" band). Doing so will create other issues that I won't bother to get into right now, though.
One final word of advice: Move the antenna OUTSIDE the vehicle. It'll work a whole lot better.
If you can have that much fun by accident, just think how much you can have on purpose!
I made a small hollow cube (OK, a box) that can be easily picked up with one hand. I covered it with aluminum foil connected it to a three microfarad capacitor such that grabbing any two opposite sides of the cube will cause the victom to be grabbing the two leads on the capacitor. I charged it to somewhere around 300 volts.
My electronics instructor asked "What's this?" and picked it up. He wasn't amused. The rest of the class was, though.
Nowadays, that thing would probably have gotten me expelled.
Really? They really sell capacitors that are supposed to smooth out the transients at the input of the power amplifier? P. T. Barnum was right!
OTOH, I once created an "L" filter using a coil and a capacitor because the alternator whine was so annoying.
Re:Author Obviously Doesn't Know Much About Patent
on
Pop-Under Ads Patented
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· Score: 2, Insightful
[Again, putting anyone "on notice" is not sufficient, you must have a non-provisional application on file, it must be published, and you can only get damages if you actually get the patent. These guys are blowing smoke!]
On the other hand, if they can get a few people to pay up-front (to avoid being sued for damages later), their stupid application has made some money.
Maybe it's not so stupid after all -- just underhanded and lacking in integrity.
[On the other hand, this is one stupid patent I'd love to see held up, just so that the licensing fees could discourage advertisers from attacking their potential clients.]
I dunno... If someone has to pay for pop-under ads, they may end up going back to pop-over ads -- a MUCH more annoying technique.
Of course, the worst ads are the ones that crawl across the text that you are trying to read. Argh!
Slashdot Mirror
If you think about it, if someone is trying to get a hold of you why should they have to try several distinct numbers and addresses? Doesn't it make sense to have just one, and information gets routed to the appropriate interface (phone, e-mail, IM, etc.)?
I would like to be able to change my email address without changing my phone number. You think spam is bad now? Consider how bad it'll be if you have one universal address. As soon as you get into the system, you're toast. The only way to stop the 100 message a day flood will be to change your universal phone/email number.
File Maker Pro, Oricle, Sybase, and all the others mentioned by you, Scott, and the others are PLATFORMS. They are used to write software and store data.
I'm talking about the software that the end user sees -- something like ACCPAC, SBT, Radio Beacon, and dozens of other pieces of business software that are written using databases like Oricle, Sybase, and Visual Foxpro, and in languages like Visual Basic, Powerbuilder, and Visual Foxpro (yes, VFP is both a database system *and* a programming language.)
Changing the entire military to a new encryption standard is not a trivial task.
The short answer seems to be "get a mac".
That's fine if all you want to do is desktop publishing, spreadsheets, and other standardized off-the-shelf software.
If you need heavy accounting, point-of-sale, warehouse management, inventory management, sales orders, receivables, payables, or other business-type software, you will find that most of the available software is Unix (generally high-end -- millions of bucks) and Windows (may be in the low thousands of dollars, or all the way up to the millions of dollars).
In the past fifteen years, most of the money I have made came from modifying existing software -- taking something that starts at a few thousand dollars a module (with perhaps ten modules available), and adding tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of modifications. If the clients had wanted a totally custom solution, it would have cost them much more.
If the client chooses the Mac, they will most likely have to go with totally custom software written in whatever language and database engine happens to be in style at the moment. There simply isn't that much sophisticated (we're not talking about peachtree here) software out there that runs on the Mac.
Still, they would probably end up with the same problems because the difficulties mentioned in the article have to do with the software itself, not the hardware or operating system.
The company has been around since the '70s, and hasn't sold much. They probably need the cash.
Am I correct in understanding that lightbulbs contain a vacuum or at least a different air pressure? If so, can I take that comment to mean that they can create a vacuum inside the printed lightbulb, or is that a seperate process?
I can't imagine why someone would want to print an incondescent light bulb. The printer would be used to print organic LEDs (OLEDs).
In fact, if you buy the wide-carriage version, you can print a really big OLED monitor. Anyone want a wide-screen 17 x 40 inch monitor?
Seriously, though, every mile they run involves some small risk. If you reduce the number of miles, you reduce the risk. Note: the above is a generalization. One would be hard-pressed to determine which is riskier, the Northwest Passage, or the Straits of Magellin.
Do you have some figures for that? You'll need to show me the math if you want me to believe it.
If you know the volume of the ocean, the surface area of the ocean, and the thermal coefficient of expansion of water, you can come up with a rough estimate. I truly can't see us depending on fossil fuels for more than another century or so. For one thing, there simply isn't enough to keep up for much more than that. It's not like we're importing carbon from Triton or something. Everything we are putting into the atmosphere came from Earth in the first place, and was sequestered there back in ages gone by.
Another issue that people neglect to bring up is the enormity of the task of melting the great land-based ice shields. First, the temperature has to be above freezing for the ice to even start to melt, and it has to be well above freezing for the ice to melt fast enough to keep from being replaced by next winter's snow. One hundred years isn't going to do the job.
The 'higher' frequency that is mentioned in the article is the frequency at which new pressure samples are taken -- in this case, 1000 times per second. It is the approximate equivalent of the sampling rate of a sound file, or the frame rate of a video.
Also, if you're ugly, you can make up your own virtual identity. This could be popular on alt.fan.furry.
If the buildings are on the same main power transformer (that big cylindrical thingy on the power poles), it should be possible to use powerline networking. http://www.hometoys.com/mentors/caswell/jun00/powe rline.html
If you still want to use 802.11, it should be no trick at all to tuck the antenna behind some curtains by a window that faces the other building. Also, some stones are transparent to RF, so you might be able to send the signal right through the wall.
If all else fails, get on to an amateur radio newsgroup and ask about sneak antennas. Hams have been dealing with restrictive antenna ordinances for many decades.
The writer was very creative in his use of off-the-shelf equipment. His experiment is a good proof-of-concept.
Amateur (Ham) Radio Operators have been communicating via packet radio for something like twenty years. Since ham radios are used, the range is measured in miles rather than feet. The only drawback of that system is that the speed is limited to 1200 baud -- though higher baud rates are used on some of the higher bands. In fact, some hams use tcp/ip as their protocol (originally, packet radio used ax.25).
For more information, check out news:alt.ham-radio.packet.
Digital radio communication is actually much older than even packet radio. Technically, morse code is a digital medium. Somewhat later, baudot code was used, and hams communicated via RTTY (Radio Teletype). I'm not sure when the first RTTY station hit the air, but I suspect that it was in the 1940s or 1950s. Later, ASCII was used for RTTY, which had the advantage of lower-case letters and more characters.
Packet Radio became popular in the 1980s, and the innovative hams used it for emergency communications, bulliton boards, email, and vehicluar communication. Some attached GPS units to the TNCs (Terminal Node Controllers), so a central station could track several mobile units. This turned out to be very useful for "fox hunting" (searching for hidden transmitters), and the more serious searches for emergency locator beacons and for illegal transmitters.
The police have been using a form of packet radio for at least ten years, and probably for a whole lot longer (I saw one ten years ago). Rather than calling your license number into the dispacher, they can type it into the terminal and get a direct text reply.
The military also uses wireless digital communication. They used RTTY way back in the ancient times when I was serving (no, we didn't use flintlock rifles). I used to repair the encryption devices that secured the links.
The author expressed some doubt about securing a wireless link, but I am confident that any communication that the military is currently researching is well secured. They have been using crypto gear for a very long time. Rather than take a chance on being accused of divulging classified information, I will just suggest that you type "comsec crypto" into google and surf from there.
The point is that once you encrypt the data, you can send it over any channel you like without fear of eavesdroppers.
Incidentally, hacking the 802.11 box to produce more power is almost certainly illegal. The FCC takes a dim view of unlicenced people modifying type-accepted gear.
I haven't researched the issue, but I believe that a ham can legally modify an 802.11 box. I am quite sure that it is legal if the operating frequency is moved to one of the ham bands (I don't recall if it is already in a "shared" band). Doing so will create other issues that I won't bother to get into right now, though.
One final word of advice: Move the antenna OUTSIDE the vehicle. It'll work a whole lot better.
If you can have that much fun by accident, just think how much you can have on purpose! I made a small hollow cube (OK, a box) that can be easily picked up with one hand. I covered it with aluminum foil connected it to a three microfarad capacitor such that grabbing any two opposite sides of the cube will cause the victom to be grabbing the two leads on the capacitor. I charged it to somewhere around 300 volts. My electronics instructor asked "What's this?" and picked it up. He wasn't amused. The rest of the class was, though. Nowadays, that thing would probably have gotten me expelled.
Really? They really sell capacitors that are supposed to smooth out the transients at the input of the power amplifier? P. T. Barnum was right! OTOH, I once created an "L" filter using a coil and a capacitor because the alternator whine was so annoying.
[Again, putting anyone "on notice" is not sufficient, you must have a non-provisional application on file, it must be published, and you can only get damages if you actually get the patent. These guys are blowing smoke!] On the other hand, if they can get a few people to pay up-front (to avoid being sued for damages later), their stupid application has made some money. Maybe it's not so stupid after all -- just underhanded and lacking in integrity.
[On the other hand, this is one stupid patent I'd love to see held up, just so that the licensing fees could discourage advertisers from attacking their potential clients.] I dunno... If someone has to pay for pop-under ads, they may end up going back to pop-over ads -- a MUCH more annoying technique. Of course, the worst ads are the ones that crawl across the text that you are trying to read. Argh!
to get one of those international driver's licenses that we get all the spam about. (Just get it from someone other than the spammer)
It would be even neater if the laptop has a built-in GPS and 802.11.