It's illegal to transmit music in the ham band, we know this. But is it illegal for me to stream an MP3 over an amateur radio 802.11 link? What about downloading an MP3? That's not exactly playing music that other people could receive. I'm not sure if that violates the intent of the FCC's rule.
On the other hand, the last thing the FCC will probably ever bust you for is using your ham radio 802.11 link to download an MP3. Maybe if you're running a public shoutcast server over it...
That part is great, so is the part about the technology companies (See Dell, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, etc) lobbying congress to NOT mandate DRM technology.
The downside is that the tech companies have also agreed to a self-imposed DRM mandate, and will ALSO drop lobbying for greater consumer rights. From http://www.bayarea.com/mld/bayarea/news/4946117.ht m "In exchange, the tech companies agreed that government shouldn't alter laws to allow consumers to bypass copyright protection measures to make personal copies of DVDs and other digital works."
Is science ever NOT driven by politics? Lets face it, politics is about power and money, and power and money are given to scientists so they can produce more power and money. If the research won't produce power or money, it's unlikely to get a lot of funding or attention.
The best example I have is nuclear energy. There are only TWO good applications for nuclear energy, one is powering vehicles in extreme environments (submarines and spacecraft), and the other is BLOWING YOU THE FUCK UP (I was told that by a retired nuclear engineer, BTW.) But in the 1950's everyone thought they'd be getting nuclear cars and nuclear home heating and hell they even tried to build a nuclear airplane which was a complete debocle (Uranium, lead, concrete, all pretty heavy materials.) Why did so much money get dumped into a stupid technology? It produced a lot of POWER, and I don't just mean electricity.
Bottom line, science is a power struggle. It sucks, but it's true.
They stopped serving alcohol in the lounge. They took away the student's garage. My degree will HOPEFULLY be accredited by the time I graduate. The school is grossly underfunded and run by chowderheads.
Thank god I go to VTC and not YOUR school!! For once the grass ISN'T greener. Compared to what I've heard about other schools, my academic experience at VTC has been pretty l33t So what if my social experience has been a steaming turd.
I took a half hour to compile all the MMC and SD prices on buy.com to determine which technology has the best price per megabyte, taking into account the reduced useable memory on SD cards. This is of course the only accurate way to compare the two.
As it turns out, MMCs have a lower price per megabyte in 16, 32, and 64 meg capacities. As capacities go up, the gap closes however, and at 128MB SD overcomes MMC as the cheaper of the two. Appearantly only SD is available in 256MB and 512MB capacities.
Sorry but this is the best I can make my table look, since/. doesn't allow tables in posts.
Prior art? IRC/msg? EMail? Christ how is instant messaging really that different from email? Email used to be near instantanious before all the fucking spam...
The US Patent Office is run by beaurocrat morons who don't know anything about anything. The whole patent process is screwed up. There needs to be some MAJOR work done on US patent law. There needs to be some kind of peer review process or SOMETHING so that bullshit like this never even has a chance.
Isn't there something about how a patentable technology must not be obvious? Maybe my definition of "obvious" is different from an idiot beaurocrat's.
One of my instructors has written a very clear and concise pthreads tutorial. You can find it in postscript, pdf, and LaTeX formats.
It gets right to the point and includes simple C code examples showing how to create and manipulate threads, mutex's, and condition variables. It's still a draft, but you might find it usefull.
Here is the introduction to the paper: "This document is intended to be a short but useful tutorial on how to use POSIX threads (pthreads). In this document I do not attempt to give a full description of all pthread features. Instead I hope to give you enough information to use pthreads in a basic, yet effective way. Please refer to a text on pthreads for the more esoteric details of the standard.
"In addition to talking about the pthread interface itself, I also spend time in this document discussion some issues regarding thread programming in general. While not specific to pthreads, it is a must that you understand these issues if you are to use pthreads--or any thread library--effectively."
My sister is 12, is brilliant, does great in school, is two years ahead of her class in math, and is very popular and has a lot of friends, not all of whome are as smart.
My female cousin is graduating this spring with a bachelors in education. She's gotten high honors straight through highschool and college, and is a star on the university lacross team. She lives in a house full of 12 other girls who are all like sisters and has about 100 friends. Social problems? Holy christ I wish I was that well liked.
Dumb people have way more problems, including self esteem, social, economic, and criminal. Being smart is your ticket to a good life.
I have a somewhat atypical case of ADD. I wasn't diagnosed untill I was 17, but looking back at my life a lot of things suddenly made sense. When I started taking methylphenidate (the chemical name for ritalin), my whole life changed for the better.
For as far back as I can remember, I had trouble in school. I'm not stupid, by most standard measures and by popular opinion I'm pretty bright. My parents always suspected something wasn't right, but were systematically reassured by schools that wasn't learning disabled, I I was just lazy or stupid or some euphimism thereof. Over the years I grew to resent school more and more, to the point of being suicidal in 8th grade, and finally dropping out after two years of highschool and two more years of vo-tech. I only thank god for putting computers on this earth to give me an outlet.
The bottom line was that I just couldn't concentrate on any one task for very long. Nothing stimulated me. Now I know what you're going to say, "You're undiscaplined! You're lazy!" NO! That's crap. Even my interest in computers, which I love to work on like nothing else, suffered because of my inability to concentrate. What is it that makes people concentrate on tasks? Maybe it is motivation or whatever you call it, but obviously if your brain is lacking in some motivation neurotransmitter than concentrating is going to pretty fucking painful.
I finally insisted on being tested for learning disabilites, and it turned out that I have not only ADD but a fine motor skills disorder that makes writing slow and painful. So that explained pretty well why I'd always been such a marginal student. I started taking methylphenidate several times a day, and my life turned around. I went to college. I graduated with honors with an associates degree in computer engineering. I'm now in the senior year of my bachelors degree. I've been awarded computer engineer of the year. I'm a leader in the student government, and I run several clubs. And I do consulting on the side. Ritalin made the difference.
Is ADD a behavioral problem? Perhaps, but brain chemicals and behavior are clearly linked. Try this experiment: think of all the shitty things in the world, fixate on them, try like hell to make yourself depressed, and I bet that you will find yourself feeling depressed. Everyone learns differently, and has different strengths and weaknesesses. Some people are just naturally more gifted at concentrating on stuff. For those of us that are naturally concentration disabled, there is little or no serious effort made to identify these deficiencies early or to treat them in any way other than with drugs. And of course its only a deficiency in relation to the average student going through our cookie-cutter generic school systems. If you're not a drooling window licker you don't get any special attention. Perhaps behavioral therapy could have or still could be effective, but that costs money and takes time. Right now I can make myself fit the mold by just popping a pill. It is a pretty attractive option.
Is ADD discapline related? Hell no. Don't even start that shit.
So the bottom line is, do whatever it takes to help your kid out. As a parent you OWE your daughter the therapy she needs, be it chemical or otherwise. Being smart is definately NOT a curse. Therapy will help her SOCIAL smarts as well as her ACADEMIC smarts. It sure has for me, not only has my academic performance improved drastically but so have my social abilities. Self esteem IS CRITICAL, and being an antisocial space cadet won't help it. Being able to use her intelligence will help her immensly in life, and does not doom her to being shunned by her peers.
You could use this technique to create some VERY interesting and realistic theater effects. You could pretty much make any arbitrary object appear or disappear at will, up on the stage, and it would look a hell of a lot more convincing that using sharkscrim.
That coat looks exactly like the thermoptics thing that hacker was wearing in Ghost in the Shell.
The video is very cool. It obviously has limited applications, since all the system does is project an image of the background onto an object in the foreground. The illusion is convincing.
What good applications are there, actually? Can anybody think of any? It could only work in a controlled environment, that is the biggest drawback.
Oh yeah, of course the dead giveaway that this system is in use would be the projector. 1000 watt point light source anybody?
Actually, there are a lot of microbes that EAT oil. This is a real problem for diesels and other heavy fuel engines. Most truck stops sell microbicide fuel additives.
I think the main point is that life in general isn't as inherantly fragile as we may have thought.
But off the subject, it's entirely possible and IMHO relatively likely for there to exist somewhere a very basic alien life form which is quite similar to our basic life forms. All of the chemicals found on earth are found elsewhere, and could quite possibly come together in a similar way. Especially when you consider the incredible variety of life, even single celled organisms. And if you add in things like viri, and even simpler things like Mad Cow Disease, the number of different types of simple life forms found here on earth is pretty big.
But I honestly think it probably is more likely that any life we discover out there is probably radically different from the life found on Earth, to the point where we may not even recognize it as life.
Shit yeah! Learning new languages is fun and also helps you to better understand old languages. REAL programmers love learning new languages.
Last year I took a programming languages class where we covered TCL and ML. Honestly they were pretty dumb and I doubt if I'll ever use either one for anything, but it did make me appreciate Perl and C that much more. We also covered Python, which actually seems usefull and I've been fiddling around with it since.
Everyone in the class had to pick a different language for their final project. Obviously Perl, Java, C, and all the other big guns got snatched up first. I decided to choose Forth. What a cool language! It's like nothing else I've ever programmed in. I was really glad I chose something so different and unusual.
Well not that old, but at least several years. Ever since the deep ocean hot vents were discovered the idea has been kicking around that they may have been the source of the first life on earth.
Why do you think we have so much focus on the "storage" of nuclear waste instead of "disposal?"
Hahahah oh lord! Why do we STORE nuclear waste versus dispose of it? BECAUSE IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO DISPOSE OF! What the fuck are you going to do with it? Seal it up in 55 gallon drums and stick it somewhere out of the way and hope they never leak? There is no safe place on earth to dump uncontained nuclear waste, and it would be cost prohibitive and extraordinarily dangerous to launch it into space. The only solution is to store it where it can be constantly monitored to ensure that it remains contained. Also to make sure no nasty terrorists get their hands on it. That's what Yucca Mt. is for.
Granted, nuclear power makes sense for super carriers and submarines, although it's too bad we need such implements in the first place. Thankfully there are relatively few nuclear powered subs and ships.
"Look up Operation Plowshare, it was the government's stupid plan to use small nuclear explosions to dig canals."
Let's see... bury nukes deep enough that the explosion (and any and all radioactive fallout) is kept underground. The explosion makes a crater, you connect the dots. Viola. What's so dangerous about that?
Well you haven't really dug a canal then, have you? And I think you'd be hard pressed to prove that all of the radiation stayed underground and that you did fling any radioactive dust into the air. Oh and it sucks for anyone who tries to dig a drinking well in that area for the next 10 million years.
Not that I'm a fan of fossile fuel either. Biomass fuels are the real solution. Check out www.biodiesel.com and www.greasecar.com for the REAL answers, at least untill we develop better photovoltaic technology.
Scifi has explored the idea of nanites quite a bit. On Red Dwarf they shrunk Red Dwarf (a 10 million ton flying garbage can with no brakes) down to microscopic size and later returned it to it's original state, and saved Lister's body (well sort of).
Don't forget the STTNG ep where Wesley made binary nanites that got into the ships computer and acted like ants in a sandhill. Who could forget the look on Jean Luc's face when the bridge PA started playing John Phillip Sousa at maximum volume.
On a more serious note, nanites have the potential for both great benefit and great harm. Imagine injecting nanites into your blood stream, they could actively destroy all pathogens. Disease could be eliminated. Or someone could release a horrible self reproducing nanite plauge that attacks human cells. Honestly both of these ideas are pretty far off at this point.
This is a deja vu back to when nuclear technology first hit the scene. I don't think nuclear energy really has any upsides, nanites on the other hand could be extraordinarily beneficial to society.
Look up Operation Plowshare, it was the government's stupid plan to use small nuclear explosions to dig canals.
And the government is already researching uses for nano tech. Remember that link a while back to the article on "smart coatings" for military vehicles? Nanite paint that can remove rust and repair damage.
Many states have enacted anti-stalking laws. I'm no lawyer but I'm pretty sure the behavior has to be threatening to be considered stalking. If he's just talking shit then it's probably not stalking, but if he is threatening you then it might be.
Also, you can always sue someone for anything. It's just a matter of WINNING the lawsuit.
Maybe you could look into a restraining order as well.
Slashdot Mirror
It's illegal to transmit music in the ham band, we know this. But is it illegal for me to stream an MP3 over an amateur radio 802.11 link? What about downloading an MP3? That's not exactly playing music that other people could receive. I'm not sure if that violates the intent of the FCC's rule.
On the other hand, the last thing the FCC will probably ever bust you for is using your ham radio 802.11 link to download an MP3. Maybe if you're running a public shoutcast server over it...
That part is great, so is the part about the technology companies (See Dell, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, etc) lobbying congress to NOT mandate DRM technology.
t m
The downside is that the tech companies have also agreed to a self-imposed DRM mandate, and will ALSO drop lobbying for greater consumer rights. From http://www.bayarea.com/mld/bayarea/news/4946117.h
"In exchange, the tech companies agreed that government shouldn't alter laws to allow consumers to bypass copyright protection measures to make personal copies of DVDs and other digital works."
Two steps forward, two steps back IMHO.
Australia sets a lot of interesting precidents.
Is science ever NOT driven by politics? Lets face it, politics is about power and money, and power and money are given to scientists so they can produce more power and money. If the research won't produce power or money, it's unlikely to get a lot of funding or attention.
The best example I have is nuclear energy. There are only TWO good applications for nuclear energy, one is powering vehicles in extreme environments (submarines and spacecraft), and the other is BLOWING YOU THE FUCK UP (I was told that by a retired nuclear engineer, BTW.) But in the 1950's everyone thought they'd be getting nuclear cars and nuclear home heating and hell they even tried to build a nuclear airplane which was a complete debocle (Uranium, lead, concrete, all pretty heavy materials.) Why did so much money get dumped into a stupid technology? It produced a lot of POWER, and I don't just mean electricity.
Bottom line, science is a power struggle. It sucks, but it's true.
I go to Vermont Technical College.
They stopped serving alcohol in the lounge.
They took away the student's garage.
My degree will HOPEFULLY be accredited by the time I graduate.
The school is grossly underfunded and run by chowderheads.
Thank god I go to VTC and not YOUR school!! For once the grass ISN'T greener. Compared to what I've heard about other schools, my academic experience at VTC has been pretty l33t So what if my social experience has been a steaming turd.
As it turns out, MMCs have a lower price per megabyte in 16, 32, and 64 meg capacities. As capacities go up, the gap closes however, and at 128MB SD overcomes MMC as the cheaper of the two. Appearantly only SD is available in 256MB and 512MB capacities.
Sorry but this is the best I can make my table look, since /. doesn't allow tables in posts.
Prior art? IRC /msg? EMail? Christ how is instant messaging really that different from email? Email used to be near instantanious before all the fucking spam...
The US Patent Office is run by beaurocrat morons who don't know anything about anything. The whole patent process is screwed up. There needs to be some MAJOR work done on US patent law. There needs to be some kind of peer review process or SOMETHING so that bullshit like this never even has a chance.
Isn't there something about how a patentable technology must not be obvious? Maybe my definition of "obvious" is different from an idiot beaurocrat's.
Problem solved.
Or argue with the manager, loudly, in the lobby, in front of lots of other people, untill he caves in and gives you a refund or exchange.
One of my instructors has written a very clear and concise pthreads tutorial. You can find it in postscript, pdf, and LaTeX formats.
It gets right to the point and includes simple C code examples showing how to create and manipulate threads, mutex's, and condition variables. It's still a draft, but you might find it usefull.
Here is the introduction to the paper:
"This document is intended to be a short but useful tutorial on how to use POSIX threads (pthreads). In this document I do not attempt to give a full description of all pthread features. Instead I hope to give you enough information to use pthreads in a basic, yet effective way. Please refer to a text on pthreads for the more esoteric details of the standard.
"In addition to talking about the pthread interface itself, I also spend time in this document discussion some issues regarding thread programming in general. While not specific to pthreads, it is a must that you understand these issues if you are to use pthreads--or any thread library--effectively."
Everyone use SyQuest! Hard drives with removeable platters! Oh, wait, hrm, nevermind.
damn windows...
w C: www.shrevesystems.com/+shreve+systems&hl=en&ie=UTF -8
http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:Hp8-9QMAlg
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2079475493
My sister is 12, is brilliant, does great in school, is two years ahead of her class in math, and is very popular and has a lot of friends, not all of whome are as smart.
My female cousin is graduating this spring with a bachelors in education. She's gotten high honors straight through highschool and college, and is a star on the university lacross team. She lives in a house full of 12 other girls who are all like sisters and has about 100 friends. Social problems? Holy christ I wish I was that well liked.
Dumb people have way more problems, including self esteem, social, economic, and criminal. Being smart is your ticket to a good life.
I have a somewhat atypical case of ADD. I wasn't diagnosed untill I was 17, but looking back at my life a lot of things suddenly made sense. When I started taking methylphenidate (the chemical name for ritalin), my whole life changed for the better.
For as far back as I can remember, I had trouble in school. I'm not stupid, by most standard measures and by popular opinion I'm pretty bright. My parents always suspected something wasn't right, but were systematically reassured by schools that wasn't learning disabled, I I was just lazy or stupid or some euphimism thereof. Over the years I grew to resent school more and more, to the point of being suicidal in 8th grade, and finally dropping out after two years of highschool and two more years of vo-tech. I only thank god for putting computers on this earth to give me an outlet.
The bottom line was that I just couldn't concentrate on any one task for very long. Nothing stimulated me. Now I know what you're going to say, "You're undiscaplined! You're lazy!" NO! That's crap. Even my interest in computers, which I love to work on like nothing else, suffered because of my inability to concentrate. What is it that makes people concentrate on tasks? Maybe it is motivation or whatever you call it, but obviously if your brain is lacking in some motivation neurotransmitter than concentrating is going to pretty fucking painful.
I finally insisted on being tested for learning disabilites, and it turned out that I have not only ADD but a fine motor skills disorder that makes writing slow and painful. So that explained pretty well why I'd always been such a marginal student. I started taking methylphenidate several times a day, and my life turned around. I went to college. I graduated with honors with an associates degree in computer engineering. I'm now in the senior year of my bachelors degree. I've been awarded computer engineer of the year. I'm a leader in the student government, and I run several clubs. And I do consulting on the side. Ritalin made the difference.
Is ADD a behavioral problem? Perhaps, but brain chemicals and behavior are clearly linked. Try this experiment: think of all the shitty things in the world, fixate on them, try like hell to make yourself depressed, and I bet that you will find yourself feeling depressed. Everyone learns differently, and has different strengths and weaknesesses. Some people are just naturally more gifted at concentrating on stuff. For those of us that are naturally concentration disabled, there is little or no serious effort made to identify these deficiencies early or to treat them in any way other than with drugs. And of course its only a deficiency in relation to the average student going through our cookie-cutter generic school systems. If you're not a drooling window licker you don't get any special attention. Perhaps behavioral therapy could have or still could be effective, but that costs money and takes time. Right now I can make myself fit the mold by just popping a pill. It is a pretty attractive option.
Is ADD discapline related? Hell no. Don't even start that shit.
So the bottom line is, do whatever it takes to help your kid out. As a parent you OWE your daughter the therapy she needs, be it chemical or otherwise. Being smart is definately NOT a curse. Therapy will help her SOCIAL smarts as well as her ACADEMIC smarts. It sure has for me, not only has my academic performance improved drastically but so have my social abilities. Self esteem IS CRITICAL, and being an antisocial space cadet won't help it. Being able to use her intelligence will help her immensly in life, and does not doom her to being shunned by her peers.
You could use this technique to create some VERY interesting and realistic theater effects. You could pretty much make any arbitrary object appear or disappear at will, up on the stage, and it would look a hell of a lot more convincing that using sharkscrim.
That coat looks exactly like the thermoptics thing that hacker was wearing in Ghost in the Shell.
The video is very cool. It obviously has limited applications, since all the system does is project an image of the background onto an object in the foreground. The illusion is convincing.
What good applications are there, actually? Can anybody think of any? It could only work in a controlled environment, that is the biggest drawback.
Oh yeah, of course the dead giveaway that this system is in use would be the projector. 1000 watt point light source anybody?
Actually, there are a lot of microbes that EAT oil. This is a real problem for diesels and other heavy fuel engines. Most truck stops sell microbicide fuel additives.
I think the main point is that life in general isn't as inherantly fragile as we may have thought.
But off the subject, it's entirely possible and IMHO relatively likely for there to exist somewhere a very basic alien life form which is quite similar to our basic life forms. All of the chemicals found on earth are found elsewhere, and could quite possibly come together in a similar way. Especially when you consider the incredible variety of life, even single celled organisms. And if you add in things like viri, and even simpler things like Mad Cow Disease, the number of different types of simple life forms found here on earth is pretty big.
But I honestly think it probably is more likely that any life we discover out there is probably radically different from the life found on Earth, to the point where we may not even recognize it as life.
The pressure of an ocean 100 miles deep is probably in a lab inside of a pressure chamber.
Shit yeah! Learning new languages is fun and also helps you to better understand old languages. REAL programmers love learning new languages.
Last year I took a programming languages class where we covered TCL and ML. Honestly they were pretty dumb and I doubt if I'll ever use either one for anything, but it did make me appreciate Perl and C that much more. We also covered Python, which actually seems usefull and I've been fiddling around with it since.
Everyone in the class had to pick a different language for their final project. Obviously Perl, Java, C, and all the other big guns got snatched up first. I decided to choose Forth. What a cool language! It's like nothing else I've ever programmed in. I was really glad I chose something so different and unusual.
Well not that old, but at least several years. Ever since the deep ocean hot vents were discovered the idea has been kicking around that they may have been the source of the first life on earth.
Marketers are professionals at trying to manipulate you into beliving them. This is just the next step.
LUKE
You will bring Captain Solo and the Wookiee
to me.
JABBA (in Huttese subtitled)
Your mind powers will not work on me, boy.
Why do you think we have so much focus on the "storage" of nuclear waste instead of "disposal?"
Hahahah oh lord! Why do we STORE nuclear waste versus dispose of it? BECAUSE IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO DISPOSE OF! What the fuck are you going to do with it? Seal it up in 55 gallon drums and stick it somewhere out of the way and hope they never leak? There is no safe place on earth to dump uncontained nuclear waste, and it would be cost prohibitive and extraordinarily dangerous to launch it into space. The only solution is to store it where it can be constantly monitored to ensure that it remains contained. Also to make sure no nasty terrorists get their hands on it. That's what Yucca Mt. is for.
Granted, nuclear power makes sense for super carriers and submarines, although it's too bad we need such implements in the first place. Thankfully there are relatively few nuclear powered subs and ships.
"Look up Operation Plowshare, it was the government's stupid plan to use small nuclear explosions to dig canals."
Let's see... bury nukes deep enough that the explosion (and any and all radioactive fallout) is kept underground. The explosion makes a crater, you connect the dots. Viola. What's so dangerous about that?
Well you haven't really dug a canal then, have you? And I think you'd be hard pressed to prove that all of the radiation stayed underground and that you did fling any radioactive dust into the air. Oh and it sucks for anyone who tries to dig a drinking well in that area for the next 10 million years.
Not that I'm a fan of fossile fuel either. Biomass fuels are the real solution. Check out www.biodiesel.com and www.greasecar.com for the REAL answers, at least untill we develop better photovoltaic technology.
Scifi has explored the idea of nanites quite a bit. On Red Dwarf they shrunk Red Dwarf (a 10 million ton flying garbage can with no brakes) down to microscopic size and later returned it to it's original state, and saved Lister's body (well sort of).
Don't forget the STTNG ep where Wesley made binary nanites that got into the ships computer and acted like ants in a sandhill. Who could forget the look on Jean Luc's face when the bridge PA started playing John Phillip Sousa at maximum volume.
On a more serious note, nanites have the potential for both great benefit and great harm. Imagine injecting nanites into your blood stream, they could actively destroy all pathogens. Disease could be eliminated. Or someone could release a horrible self reproducing nanite plauge that attacks human cells. Honestly both of these ideas are pretty far off at this point.
This is a deja vu back to when nuclear technology first hit the scene. I don't think nuclear energy really has any upsides, nanites on the other hand could be extraordinarily beneficial to society.
Look up Operation Plowshare, it was the government's stupid plan to use small nuclear explosions to dig canals.
And the government is already researching uses for nano tech. Remember that link a while back to the article on "smart coatings" for military vehicles? Nanite paint that can remove rust and repair damage.
Many states have enacted anti-stalking laws. I'm no lawyer but I'm pretty sure the behavior has to be threatening to be considered stalking. If he's just talking shit then it's probably not stalking, but if he is threatening you then it might be.
Also, you can always sue someone for anything. It's just a matter of WINNING the lawsuit.
Maybe you could look into a restraining order as well.