If I were a plumber, and I installed a toilet, I don't get paid every time someone takes a dump.
If I designed a toilet, ditto.
If I own a patent on some new-fangled kind of super-toilet, ditto.
So do other creative professions seem to think that they deserve to get paid every time their work gets used...?
From a quick reading of the pdf, it looks like this is just an API to draw simple shapes on the remote display, NOT do all the clever automatic smart compression stuff that their Windows driver does to provide additional monitors. Potentially useful, but nowhere near equivalent functionality to the Windows/Mac versions.
They claim that they can charge 50-odd KWH in 3-6 minutes - at 100% efficiency this corresponds to 1 to 0.5 megawatts of charge power, which would be pretty much impractical in any real-world application.
I'd sure like to see that charging connector......
Buy a set of small tools ( including all the 'security' type screwdriver bits), and get a load of dead consumer electronics from friends & neighbours etc. and encourage him to take stuff apart, figure out how it works, try to fix stuff etc. A subscription to Make magazine would also be good.
We used Bluetooth for tracking people across London Bridge & displaying the results on Tower Bridge as part of a 1-week lighting festival earlier this year - info at http://www.whitewing.co.uk/switchedon.html
I was also recently involved in installng a permanent Bluetooth-responsive light artwork in a bench outside ASDA in Poole, Dorset - this generates colour waves moving along the bench in response to people walking past, using relative signal strengths from 2 sensors to determine direction. (pic at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mannmade/1432286282/)
I was walking around London's West End last night - up til about 4PM there were only about 50-70 people in the Apple Store Queue, almost outnumbered by staff,stewards and press. A few other phone shops had barriers and door staff from around 5PM but no sign of anyone interested in queuing.
By 7PM many of the phone shops were not exactly crowded, with half the staff outside leafletting and trying to persuade people in to have a look.
Considering there are currently >600 unlocked ones on Ebay UK, it isn't exactly surprising the 'official' launch was a bit of a flop, as anyone really interested would already have an imported one.
A passive RFID tag of the size that could be put in a coin would have a range of a few of inches max. If any of the 'coin' was still made of metal, the damping effect it would kill it stone dead - just wouldn't be detectable. If it wasn't metal, the lack of weight would make it immediately obvious. I small BS....
The piezos in phones will not generate enough energy to be an ignition risk, either in normal operation, or under fault conditions. You can (just) get visible sparks by manually flexing the disc of a large piezo sounder disc, but a packaged piezo would crack before it produced a dangerous amount of charge. I have been directly involved in intrinsic-safety (equipment for use in explosive atmospheres) approval of devices containing peizo sounders, and have done tests on this.
The only serious iginitiion on a phone is drop damage resulting in battery shorts.
Am I right in thinking that this CD protection system installs a driver (which prevents normal access to the CD) by default without asking the user...? If so, what's the difference between this and a trojan ? Sue these muppets for damaging your PC. This would certainly be illegal in the UK under the computer misuse act.
It's this sort of thing makes me real glad I don't live in the USA....
These morons can't make a secure smartcard so are trying to screw money out of people instead of fixing it. I really hope enough people file criminal charges for extortion and a class action to give these bullies a serious kicking.
The victims are really not helping anyone by rolling over to these bully-boy threats. I'm not familiar with the US legal system, but I don't see how it would cost $3500 to represent yourself in front of a judge, explain in plain English the legitimate uses for the reader and how this company is trying to extort money with no evidence - am I being really naive here....???
Wouldn't it be funny if a few people sent money to their Paypal link from stolen credit-card numbers cards so Paypal froze their account....!
Whatever next - "you bought a computer, therefore you were programming smartcards and ripping us off..."
As this tax only applies to digitally delivered products, one option as a buyer is to simply lie about your location. OK they may need an address for the credit-card holder, but I'm sure this can be worked around easily enough. There's nothing the EU can do to force compoanies to comply so I suspect such dodges will be widespread, and sites will make it easy for users to do it, so they attract more business away from competitors who are dumb enough to do as the EU tells them. I'm sure many places may also collect the VAT and just pocket it. There's nothing the EU can do, so whu should they worry?
Ok, they don't need a backlight, but as the display is emitting light, it will undoubtedly draw more than the 'raw' tft panel in an LCD - the question is how much power does the OLED+drivers take compared to the oldTFT+drivers+backlight. The review doesn't mention this, and as display power is usually the major battery-sucker on a digital cam I'm surprised this is not mentioned. The fact that this camera also has an optical viewfinder makes me suspect that maybe the power advantage isn't all that great, although even if there is no pwer advantage the improvement in display resolution and view angle is still a worthwhile advance.
The book 'The Hubble Wars' mentions a coating called 'Martin Black' developed by Lockheed-Martin for use in spy satellites - I wonder how this stuff compares. I found some info Here : The 'Martin Black' is not a paint at all, but a specially etched aluminum surface that acts like an anechoic chamber on a microscopic scale. The surface looks like an array of very steep pyramids a few wavelengths of light apart. It's extremely fragile & expensive to produce, but was never
a classified process. Mostly used in aerospace optical hardware such as star trackers & imaging systems that have to work in direct sunlight.
Ball Aerospace has a version of this process. It's considered to be a 'proprietary' process, ie they won't tell you how it's done for commercial reasons.
Just how many microseconds would it take people to figure out how to put tinfoil over the GPS antenna.... no GPS, No tracking, No tax.
What planet are the idiots who think up this stuff on?
The MAC address is almost always stored in a little serial EEPROM (usually a 93C46) on the card. These are a doddle to reprogram - either with a general-purpose eeprom programmer, or with some simple software which talks to the chip via a simple cable off the printer port - I'm sure there's some software out there to do it (try here)
All the NICs I've looked store the MAC in a very obvious format in the chip, whithout any pesky checksums to fix up - I recently used this method to simplify swapping 2 PCs off one cable modem.
As the NIC controller chip can read from the eeprom, chances are it can also be made to write to it as well, so it's probably possible to write a program to change the MAC without any hardware twiddling - a read of the chip;s data sheet would probably show you how.
Slashdot Mirror
Flipdots Are pretty close to large-scale e-ink
For those interested in the insides of the camera, a while ago I 'recovered' one and did This teardown video
If I were a plumber, and I installed a toilet, I don't get paid every time someone takes a dump. If I designed a toilet, ditto. If I own a patent on some new-fangled kind of super-toilet, ditto. So do other creative professions seem to think that they deserve to get paid every time their work gets used...?
From a quick reading of the pdf, it looks like this is just an API to draw simple shapes on the remote display, NOT do all the clever automatic smart compression stuff that their Windows driver does to provide additional monitors. Potentially useful, but nowhere near equivalent functionality to the Windows/Mac versions.
Couldn't you just send a copy direct to the Patent office?
They claim that they can charge 50-odd KWH in 3-6 minutes - at 100% efficiency this corresponds to 1 to 0.5 megawatts of charge power, which would be pretty much impractical in any real-world application. I'd sure like to see that charging connector......
Buy a set of small tools ( including all the 'security' type screwdriver bits), and get a load of dead consumer electronics from friends & neighbours etc. and encourage him to take stuff apart, figure out how it works, try to fix stuff etc. A subscription to Make magazine would also be good.
We used Bluetooth for tracking people across London Bridge & displaying the results on Tower Bridge as part of a 1-week lighting festival earlier this year - info at http://www.whitewing.co.uk/switchedon.html I was also recently involved in installng a permanent Bluetooth-responsive light artwork in a bench outside ASDA in Poole, Dorset - this generates colour waves moving along the bench in response to people walking past, using relative signal strengths from 2 sensors to determine direction. (pic at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mannmade/1432286282/)
I was walking around London's West End last night - up til about 4PM there were only about 50-70 people in the Apple Store Queue, almost outnumbered by staff,stewards and press. A few other phone shops had barriers and door staff from around 5PM but no sign of anyone interested in queuing. By 7PM many of the phone shops were not exactly crowded, with half the staff outside leafletting and trying to persuade people in to have a look. Considering there are currently >600 unlocked ones on Ebay UK, it isn't exactly surprising the 'official' launch was a bit of a flop, as anyone really interested would already have an imported one.
A passive RFID tag of the size that could be put in a coin would have a range of a few of inches max. If any of the 'coin' was still made of metal, the damping effect it would kill it stone dead - just wouldn't be detectable. If it wasn't metal, the lack of weight would make it immediately obvious.
I small BS....
The piezos in phones will not generate enough energy to be an ignition risk, either in normal operation, or under fault conditions. You can (just) get visible sparks by manually flexing the disc of a large piezo sounder disc, but a packaged piezo would crack before it produced a dangerous amount of charge. I have been directly involved in intrinsic-safety (equipment for use in explosive atmospheres) approval of devices containing peizo sounders, and have done tests on this. The only serious iginitiion on a phone is drop damage resulting in battery shorts.
The Eidophor an amazingly ingenious bit of vintage technology, used from the 50s to the 80s for REALLY BIG projections.... I want one!
How is the $500 device any better than this $49 device from SanDisk....?
Am I right in thinking that this CD protection system installs a driver (which prevents normal access to the CD) by default without asking the user...?
If so, what's the difference between this and a trojan ? Sue these muppets for damaging your PC.
This would certainly be illegal in the UK under the computer misuse act.
How long before they get sued by someone who crashes their car after being distracted by a moving image one a billboard....
http://www.emanator.demon.co.uk/bigclive/lavalamp. htm
Chip cost is largely down to the number of die you can put on a wafer, so smaller geometries are cheaper, not more expensive.
It's this sort of thing makes me real glad I don't live in the USA.... These morons can't make a secure smartcard so are trying to screw money out of people instead of fixing it. I really hope enough people file criminal charges for extortion and a class action to give these bullies a serious kicking. The victims are really not helping anyone by rolling over to these bully-boy threats. I'm not familiar with the US legal system, but I don't see how it would cost $3500 to represent yourself in front of a judge, explain in plain English the legitimate uses for the reader and how this company is trying to extort money with no evidence - am I being really naive here....??? Wouldn't it be funny if a few people sent money to their Paypal link from stolen credit-card numbers cards so Paypal froze their account....! Whatever next - "you bought a computer, therefore you were programming smartcards and ripping us off..."
As this tax only applies to digitally delivered products, one option as a buyer is to simply lie about your location. OK they may need an address for the credit-card holder, but I'm sure this can be worked around easily enough. There's nothing the EU can do to force compoanies to comply so I suspect such dodges will be widespread, and sites will make it easy for users to do it, so they attract more business away from competitors who are dumb enough to do as the EU tells them. I'm sure many places may also collect the VAT and just pocket it. There's nothing the EU can do, so whu should they worry?
Ok, they don't need a backlight, but as the display is emitting light, it will undoubtedly draw more than the 'raw' tft panel in an LCD - the question is how much power does the OLED+drivers take compared to the oldTFT+drivers+backlight. The review doesn't mention this, and as display power is usually the major battery-sucker on a digital cam I'm surprised this is not mentioned. The fact that this camera also has an optical viewfinder makes me suspect that maybe the power advantage isn't all that great, although even if there is no pwer advantage the improvement in display resolution and view angle is still a worthwhile advance.
How about connecting it up to a rather large 5KV capacitor bank (near bottom of page)
The book 'The Hubble Wars' mentions a coating called 'Martin Black' developed by Lockheed-Martin for use in spy satellites - I wonder how this stuff compares. I found some info Here : The 'Martin Black' is not a paint at all, but a specially etched aluminum surface that acts like an anechoic chamber on a microscopic scale. The surface looks like an array of very steep pyramids a few wavelengths of light apart. It's extremely fragile & expensive to produce, but was never a classified process. Mostly used in aerospace optical hardware such as star trackers & imaging systems that have to work in direct sunlight. Ball Aerospace has a version of this process. It's considered to be a 'proprietary' process, ie they won't tell you how it's done for commercial reasons.
Just how many microseconds would it take people to figure out how to put tinfoil over the GPS antenna.... no GPS, No tracking, No tax. What planet are the idiots who think up this stuff on?
All the NICs I've looked store the MAC in a very obvious format in the chip, whithout any pesky checksums to fix up - I recently used this method to simplify swapping 2 PCs off one cable modem.
As the NIC controller chip can read from the eeprom, chances are it can also be made to write to it as well, so it's probably possible to write a program to change the MAC without any hardware twiddling - a read of the chip;s data sheet would probably show you how.
Computers haven't been sensitive to static magnetic fields since the days of magnetic core memory. ESD is a whole 'nother thing though....