Well, one thing to consider is that plexiglass is subject to breaking as well. One concern is that since it takes a bit more energy to break plexiglass than it does to break glass, there is a limited level of added security by using it. However once it does break, you will probably also loose your solar cell bank as well.
So far on one has noted that there are flexible solar cells available as an alternative. I won't say that they are superior in any specific way. I beleive that current options have a lower percentage of energy capture, and are also more expensive per square foot, meaning that they are substantially more expensive per kwh, but once in place may last significantly longer. The solar arrays on the ISS, and Hubble Space Telescope are both flexiable material.
I am reasonably comfortable with the thought that the Tivo will be telling the Nielson box periodically what it being displayed on the TV. If the show is half an hour, and only 18 min. are being viewed, the comercials are probably being skipped. If it is an hour show, and view time is 40 min, liekwise. If view time is longer than show time, then the user probably paused the program for some reason, and may or may not be skipping comercials.
Given the amount of hardware that is required to support a nielson home, and so forth, the only way that I can see TW, or ATT making use of this feature is to rebuild their cable boxes so that they can connect to the serial port on a tivo (I don't think this is an option on DirecTivo) and encourage the tivo owner to cross connect them for some reason.
Then again, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
Re:Intel again? Why not Power4?
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IBM's Deep View
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· Score: 2
I would venture to guess because the Power4 processor is not optimized, nor designed to be used in a workstation environment. I would also suspect that it is not designed to be used as a graphics processor.
Power chips are not PowerPC chips. If you are refering to PowerPC Generation 4 processors, your message is a missleading question. Additionally, I don't believe that the PPCg4 is quite up to an x86 processor (off the shelf speeds) yet. Don't get me wrong, for the work I do, a G4 Mac would probably be sufficient, but if you are talking raw graphics processing, that's a different market.
-Rusty
Re:why are we securing it this way?
on
Future of Wi-Fi
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· Score: 2
Doesn't that end....
Vizini: "Ha ha ha !" [Vizini falls over dead of iocain powder poisoning.]
Being accepted as a Debian package means that your package does follow the Debian policy. That means that there are over 9000 packages where the developer was concerned enough about the policy to follow through with what put you to sleep.
The dselect, apt-get, dpkg, gnome-apt, installers do just what you are asking a package installer to do. When you build a package, using Make, or other software building applications that support Debian packages, your package does identify what files are needed, what independently developed packages are required. It also handles uninstall very well.
Is it perfect? Nope. But in comparison to Windows software installers, it is light years ahead.
Of course BSD users will brag about how their installer works for any platform that has a C compiler... and that there exists drivers for the hardware... Sounds like a really lousy way to be set up to uninstall software later, but I am not judging the system, I don't use it.
In their Statment of Assurance, they specifically allow that they may license, sell or re-assign any or all rights to a third party, who is not and would not be bound by the Statement of Assurance.
Basically this means that the parts of SELinux that they have a patent on, are free of licensing restrictions, so long as the distribution continues to be SELinux (you are free to modify it and re-distribute under the same name) and so long as they have not reassigned those rights on the patent to a third party.
Forgive me if I seem a bit less than touched by the assurance, but this assurance seems to me to be exceedingly self serving, and no assurance of anything.
Anyone care to come up with an estimate on how many base stations would be needed to cover all the US? I bet it's a lot!
US Surface Area 3,618,770 square miles 1 square mile = 27878400 square feet 802.11b radius 300 yards (outside) or 900 feet Area of circle = pi r^2 Area of base station coverage = pi *(900^2) = 2544615 base stations per square mile asuming perfect coverage = square mile in feet / area covered by base station = 27878400 / 2544615 10.955+, or for all practical purposes 11.
That means we need 11 * 3,618,770 or 39,806,470 base stations for 802.11b coverage.
If you assume that each base station, including required infrastructure to support it (minimum requirements solar cells, storage batteries, built in routing software/hardware) were $100 (in the volumes we are talking here I think we can get some discounts...) you are looking at the stray 3.9 billion that worldcom misplaced in it's accounting records.
The perfect coverage assumption is based upon the assumption that there is neither overlap, nor dead space. With circular coverage patterns you can not get that kind of coverage. You will always have some of one or the other. However this calculation does provide an estimate for an average overlap and blind spots.
Oh, source of surface area information was a 1991 copy of the World Almanac, and the area does include a lot of water surface that could be partially eliminated.
The BeOS kernel was the source of BeOS's performance. The Linux kernel is a fine kernel for a platform based around making use of the software that was written for operating systems that came before Linux.
That does not mean that it would not be possible to build a varient of BeOS that runs with a Linux kernel, in fact there was an effort to build just such a platform. I have not heard a lot form them lately, which may be an indication of the people involved all being short of time, or possibly problems with the implementation of the vision.
On top of everything else, the developers made a decision to go the direction they took. That decision may not jive with your opinion, it may not even jive with documentable facts. However the decision has been made, and they are running with it.
If you really want to figure out why they made the choices they did, feel free to go to their web site and see if you can understand from that.
Perhaps I am wrong, I expect that I am for some situatins.
In any case, I don't recall anyone askin the guy building the helicopter in his garage if there was a market for the thing. Or the handyman who puts together a skiff out of some plywood and marine glue and fibreglass.
In my opinion, the folks working on OpenBeOS are highly skilled craftsmen who are using their tallents on their own time, to work on a project that interests them. If the end result of that project is a product that only they use, I doubt that they are going to be particularly disapointed.
At the same time, I am one of perhaps dozens or hundreds who are looking for an update to BeOS that will allow me to use new hardware that BeOS does not support. Not because I can't use BeOS now, I do. Because I would like to go back to using an OS that performs the way BeOS does, and that I can use newer hardware and peripherals with. To me that makes OpenBeOS worth while, and worth following.
Then again, I won't force that view down your throat. If you insist that the handyman building a boat in his back yard, on his own time, do a marketing study on the demand for personal watercraft, I think I can afford to compliment him on his work and help him get it to the water when he is ready to do that.
Defiately off topic. Yahoo-Reuters story suggests it is a self inflicted gunshot to the head. As has already been noted, Gene does not appear to have had any involvement in OpenBeOS, much less being one of the founders. If you have other information, I would be impressed if you could produce a viable reference.
I am not about to disparage security by any means. Without it the company I work for would not be on the Internet. Even so there are a couple of considerations to take in when working with an OS and determining if multi-user is required.
First of all note that BeOS had hooks built into it for multi-user opportunities. The default user-id is Baron, not root. There are add-ons that provide a multi-user environment as well.
There are down sides to having a muli-user platform as well. There are situations where it makes sense to have the OS come up and start running a user application. Tivo is one example, Internet radio stations are another.
That said, one of the down sides of having a multi-user system is the very thing that makes it handy to have. Adding cycles to authenticate access slows down a platform.
Also note that if little brother is dedicated to finding a way to delete big sister's homework, the fact that the platform is multi-user, with ACLs, does not prevent little brother from being paitent and finding bit sister's password, or breaking the SU password and getting to the file.
Actally having to re-install an OS is nothing compared to losing some data. For example the password file to your online bank account, or your graduate thesus and supporting documentation. The OS is either available on redilly available CD-Rom disks, or other handy resources. If you have spent months collecting and analyzing data, putting together your paper, you probably can't re-create it overnight. If your Online checkbook is compromised, it very well may cost you significanly more than the value of your time and materials to re-build your system.
Then again, it apperars that you have different ideas, so I could be wrong.
I made a very brief test of both layouts, awef ijio; and qefb njip, and found that the awef jio; felt both more natural, and resulted in fewwer errors. (I was continuously retyping in the second layout, yet almost had no problems at all with the first.)
I think part of this is that at the very least the index and pinkies were where they were expected to be, and the middle fingers were ok moving around.
I will give this a bit more of a workout myself, and see if my error rate and speed improve.
Point 2, requires providing reasonable evidence that the manufacturers are acting as a cartel, not simply the accusation.
I might point out that it requires some very strong evidence, not just the observation that they are behaving publicly as a cartel.
If public behaviour were sufficent, you could sue the major oil companies. Ever notice how all their unrelated gas stations are adjusting their prices on the same day, always to within a couple of pennies of each other? That is cartel like behaviour. However because the managers of the various gas stations do not talk with each other, and come to an agreement ahead of time, providing each station with a schedule of when to adjust prices, and by how much, they are not defined as a cartel.
There are other reasons for the price changes happening as they do. Reasons like the amount each station is paying for gasoline delivered. The fact that the manager of one station observes that the manager of another station has dropped that station's prices and drivers are going to that station now.
Likewise for delership mechanics having "proprietary" information. That "fact" is not sufficient to take a collection of car companies to court for acting as a cartel. However it is very much cartel like behaviour.
Um, by definition of Patent, if their assembly equipment is patented, then it is open. (of course the fact that it is patented means that they get to charge other people using that same assembly equipment royalties...)
Exactly. The process they have used to ensure copy protection is similar to setting up a booby trap to protect your house. Even if you post notices that the booby trap exists, you are still liable for any damage that that booby trap causes.
The labeling of the CD in english that it is not intended for computer use, is insufficient. The city I live in has speakers of English, Spanish, Arabic, Hmong, and Viet in large quantities, including many who only speak that language. Any warning label at a minimum must cover all of these languages, and even that will not cover the significant portion of the population who does not know how to read, but can use a computer.
Exactly how much reading knowledge is involved in using a CD Player on a computer? You turn the computer on, wait for the pretty pictures to settle down for a little bit, hit the eject button on the CD-Rom drive (if necessary) put the CD in the drive, wait for the CD Player software to start up, and hit the button that looks like a single arrow, [||/|>]. Even your two year old could follow those instructions if they were read to him or her, translated into whatever language is necessary. That may not be the way you have your computer set up, but I am reasonably confident that your computer (if not built by you from components) was originally configured to work that way once the computer was ready to use.
One of the problems with using the copy protection scheams that have been presented, is that a music pirate that removes that copy protection and starts to distribute CDs without it, has a product that has more value to consumers than the original.
Worse is that it is very rare that the people who are affected by copy protection of this nature are affected because they are going to pirate and distribute the music. These people are engaged in completely legal archiving of their music, as well as making lower quality copies for use in portable media devices.
about the size and weight of a standard Franklin Planner. Small enough to comfortably fit in a book bag, brief case, etc. Large enough that it won't easily be lost. May even double as the cover of a Franklin Planer with a seven ring binding system.
May be available in other Franklin Planner sizes...
Output systems/components.
Screen in Base unit.
Flat Speaker (tech exists to make an lcd display into a speaker, use it.)
Stereo-mike headset
I like to listen to my mp3's as well, and would like the option of using this as a very inteligent cell phone, or at home or work an IP phone
This may be a bluetooth item, negating need for a jack
HUD glasses.
I would love to be able to be silently reminded of apointments with a bannerboard that only I can see. This does not need to be a full 320x100 dot screen, simply one or two lines of text used regularly as a clock, and also as a reminder screen.
Display watch
Ordinarily looks like a multi-line digital watch, (perhaps four lines, top is date, middle two displays std double hight time, bottom displays day-of week, chime and alarm indicators. Buttons allow it to interact via blue tooth with your base unit for quick reminders.
text-to-speech
Input Devices/ports
stylus|screen or pen|paper with handwriting recognition as well as immediate recognition of switching to drawing mode.
Four USB-2 ports
to support standard external keyboard, mouse, external hard drives, etc, some of which may also be supported by two firewire ports
Bluetooth enabled data gloves
Might just as well be able to control three dimmensions, as well as have a keyboard that is completely unwired.
Microphone on base unit allows speach recognition at dictation rates.
Bluetooth for local devices
802.11x for broadband
10/100/1G ethernet wired connection
hat mounted gps reciever, with directioal sensors
Might just as well have the correct local time, as well as navigation hints in that HUD in the glasses.
ocr scanning pen
Features/Applications
CPU fast enough to keep up with the tasks required
Memory
sufficient internal memory to deal with a managers e-mail volume
cf and sd memory ports for MP3 storage
optional memory stick port if device is made by sony
ES-based PIM
Can interact with Outlook, Outlook Express, Evolution, Gnome Office, Koffice, Lotus Organizer, etc. to caapture known scheduled events, and put them in the schedules so that others who need to be able to schedule meetings with you know what time you have available
It will also parse inbox e-mail, auto-filing informational messages, Identifying spam by content, and handling appropriately, (either simply discarding, or identifying the real source of the spam and notifying the ISP where the message came from of the breach in security.)
Anti-virus features of recognizing when e-mail contains viri, dealing with it appropriately.
Inteligently handles apointment requests. If it is from your boss, it may preempt an existing appointment, and forward a cancelation notice on that appointment, (or at lest pend such a notice, allowing you to make that decision)
Book Reader
games
financial management software
text-telephony
There may be times when you want to place a phone call to someone who is deaf, so you could do so through an IM client, or you may not be able to speak yourself, so a typing to speach feature might be nice as well.
Are there more? Sure. I would love to be able to say, "I am taking Mindy out to eat tonight." and the ES should be able to identify whom Mindy is, find an appropriate place for us to eat, check with me for approval on the selection of eating places, show me the menu, allow me to select what to eat for both of us, reserve eating space arrangements, if appropriate, select the wine from the resturant's inventory, compare resturant reservation times with schedules for movies in the area, suggest a movie that Mindy might like, if the occasion warrents, make arangements for limo or taxi transportation, confirm that my checkbook reserves cover the expenses, including maximum tips (even if I am not going to tip that much) Interacting with Mindy's PDA as appropriate, (give her the option of selecting her own dinner, without revealing the choice of resturant if possible, getting Mindy's preferences in movies or other entertainment, and setting up an appointment on her callendar as needed.)
I also happen to think it would be a good idea if it would interact with my car for scheduled maintenance, my house automation system for security and lights controls (both when I am in the house and when I am away.)
Then again, those are just some of my ideas, I have also liked many of the others proposed.
OS? OpenBeOS, or QNX possibly, something very close to real time.
I don't recall if any of the tests in the past have tried it, but one way to check out Cyc's status would be to use it a the back end of a program participating in a Turring test.
Another use would be to prime a nural net with a set of "known facts" and see how well the net takes off from there.
Just because a tool on it's own isn't particularly userful, doesn't mean that it will not be usefull as a component of some other tool.
I won't argue that this is not an AI, however it is learning. I have read several articles over the years on Cyc, and am impressed with some of the methods they have used to get it to learn. As an example to speed up the process, they have had Cyc reading through newspapers, and proposing new rules based upon what it reads. Before the rules it 'develops' are put in place, they are reviewed and either denyied or approved.
To some degree I would rather have an expert system based upon a database of rules than a true AI, in that if a corrupted rule gets in place it can be easily excised and the system can move on.
For a nural net to do what Cyc can already do would require significantly more data processing than is generally available today. In honesty, I think that to build a nural net with even some of these capabilites would require a significantly sized cluster, similar to (in hardware) a Beowolf cluster, but wired as a partial mesh rather than a tree.
Then of course there is the obligatory "imagine a beowolf cluster of these" comment...
Getting slightly off topic here, but I would point out that the vehicle is using at least four point seat belts. I have no doubt that the desingers are very concerned about the safety of this vehicle. It is also a test vehicle rather than a prototype.
At the other end of this is the fact that percieved safety on the part of the driver has an inverse ration to the results of colisions. i.e. if the driver percieves the vehicle as safe, the results of accidents the driver is in are worse.
One way to think about it is how much more attention would you pay to the environment you are driving in, if you were told that the air-bag electronics were wired to a couple of sticks of dynamite under your seat. As long as you prevented yourself from being in an accident, you would survive.
Gasoline is a fluid with weight characteristics similar to water. 1 gallon of water weighs 8 lb, one liter of water weighs 1 kg. Gasoline is slightly lighter (floats on water) but this vehicle runs on Diesel, which I don't remember it's actual weight properties. As a result I am assuming that it is also similar to water, someone can provide the correct numbers.
At five gallons, or just under 20 liters, the weight of the fule is 5*8/22000 or just over.18% of the weight of the car. I do not know what the crossover point for this vehicle is, but at some point the added weight for a full tank, with expected passenger load will result in lower millage figures than they designers think is acceptable.
The average range for cars on a full tank of gas isn't much differnt than this vehicles range. Both are significantly longer than most purely electric's 75-100 mile range. Though for 99% of my needs, 75-100 miles is more than sufficient.
400 miles at 70 mph (average freeway speeds) is over 5 hours of driving.
Social contracts are quasi binding. If you live in a neighborhood that has a public standards commitee, you may have a binding contract without signature, or word of mouth, that may easily exceed $500. For example if the public standards commitee decrees that houses on the block may not be painted white, with black trim, and you subsequently move in, and repaint the house white with black trim, the social contract you live in that neighborhood under may require that you either re-paint the house, or have the house re-painted.
The cost may easily exceed $500 to you, but may be offset by increasing the value of the adjoining properties in the neighborhood by virtue of the house being in agreement with local paint standards.
This is not the only type of social contract you participate in. Open air concerts generally do not hire squadrons of armed security personel to gaurd the perimiter, however the vast majority of people do purchase tickets and attend by passing through the gates with a valid ticket. This is a social contract with a written contract on top of it. (tickets being considered written contractual material.)
There are several other social contracts that you comply with, for example you and your co-workers may have an agreement to dress in some group co-ordinated style, where the office clothing code does not specify more than buisness attire, shirt and tie with jacket for meetings for men, business dress for women, casual fridays. Casual fridays in most businesses does not mean t-shirt and cut-offs, but may be interpreted as anything from a flanel or polo shirt with clean un-torn jeans, up to dockers, turtleneck and daily business shoes. How you interpret it is part of the social contract you have with your co-workers.
Another way to look at that cable contract is that it is a monthly re-curring contract for $50 a month. It also may not be entirely a verbal contract in that when you signed off on the installer's completion paperwork, you may also have signed a contract for the service to be rendered. This contract (as with your credit cards) may be ammended by an insert in your monthly bill.
Part of this contract idea that broadcasters have (which I am not entirely in agreement with) is that if you get up during a comercial break, to get snacks, or relieve yourself, the possibility exists that you will return to the program some time after the comercials have ended. Without a rewind capability, or pause option, you stand to loose as much the entertainment value of the show, as the advertizer believes they have lost in walk-aways. PVR's change that.
You will have to look pretty hard for a jukbox6000, I don't think they are on the market any more. Check E-bay. Considering one of it's capabilities is a 6G USB hard drive, street value is proably under $200 now.
My recollection is that I saw a Studio, or Recorder version with a 20G drive for approx $350 last month at either Micro Center, or CompUSA. BestBuy currently has the Archos Jukbox Recorder 20, listed at $319 (my purchase price was listed at $299 when I put it in my cart) URL is http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11101124&m=488 &cat=538&scat=539
Prices apparently have come down. BestBuy also has the recorder in a 10G capacity, so you might find that workable instead. Price given for that is $259. Free shipping on all portable mp3 players.
Then again, I have relatives who either do or have worked for BestBuy. If you can find a better price somewhere else, and I think you probably can, go get it at the better price.
It may be reverse engineering, but unless I miss my guesse, that will not be a problem as far as the DMCA is concerned, as what was reverse engineered was not a means of retaining secure control of a media product. What was reverse engineered was the means of using a product that does not have access controls built into it.
There may be UCITA or EULA violations involved, however I don't expect that the people at Archos are interested in persuing that at this time. I personally don't think they want to be on the loosing side of a court battle over either EULA or UCITA.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, one thing to consider is that plexiglass is subject to breaking as well. One concern is that since it takes a bit more energy to break plexiglass than it does to break glass, there is a limited level of added security by using it. However once it does break, you will probably also loose your solar cell bank as well.
So far on one has noted that there are flexible solar cells available as an alternative. I won't say that they are superior in any specific way. I beleive that current options have a lower percentage of energy capture, and are also more expensive per square foot, meaning that they are substantially more expensive per kwh, but once in place may last significantly longer. The solar arrays on the ISS, and Hubble Space Telescope are both flexiable material.
Just some thoughts...
-Rusty
I am reasonably comfortable with the thought that the Tivo will be telling the Nielson box periodically what it being displayed on the TV. If the show is half an hour, and only 18 min. are being viewed, the comercials are probably being skipped. If it is an hour show, and view time is 40 min, liekwise. If view time is longer than show time, then the user probably paused the program for some reason, and may or may not be skipping comercials.
Given the amount of hardware that is required to support a nielson home, and so forth, the only way that I can see TW, or ATT making use of this feature is to rebuild their cable boxes so that they can connect to the serial port on a tivo (I don't think this is an option on DirecTivo) and encourage the tivo owner to cross connect them for some reason.
Then again, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
I would venture to guess because the Power4 processor is not optimized, nor designed to be used in a workstation environment. I would also suspect that it is not designed to be used as a graphics processor.
Power chips are not PowerPC chips. If you are refering to PowerPC Generation 4 processors, your message is a missleading question. Additionally, I don't believe that the PPCg4 is quite up to an x86 processor (off the shelf speeds) yet. Don't get me wrong, for the work I do, a G4 Mac would probably be sufficient, but if you are talking raw graphics processing, that's a different market.
-Rusty
Doesn't that end....
Vizini: "Ha ha ha !" [Vizini falls over dead of iocain powder poisoning.]
-Rusty
Being accepted as a Debian package means that your package does follow the Debian policy. That means that there are over 9000 packages where the developer was concerned enough about the policy to follow through with what put you to sleep.
The dselect, apt-get, dpkg, gnome-apt, installers do just what you are asking a package installer to do. When you build a package, using Make, or other software building applications that support Debian packages, your package does identify what files are needed, what independently developed packages are required. It also handles uninstall very well.
Is it perfect? Nope. But in comparison to Windows software installers, it is light years ahead.
Of course BSD users will brag about how their installer works for any platform that has a C compiler... and that there exists drivers for the hardware... Sounds like a really lousy way to be set up to uninstall software later, but I am not judging the system, I don't use it.
-Rusty
Actually it took them a month to take the system down, and it will remain down until they can find a way to secure that network.
-Rusty
In their Statment of Assurance, they specifically allow that they may license, sell or re-assign any or all rights to a third party, who is not and would not be bound by the Statement of Assurance.
Basically this means that the parts of SELinux that they have a patent on, are free of licensing restrictions, so long as the distribution continues to be SELinux (you are free to modify it and re-distribute under the same name) and so long as they have not reassigned those rights on the patent to a third party.
Forgive me if I seem a bit less than touched by the assurance, but this assurance seems to me to be exceedingly self serving, and no assurance of anything.
-Rusty
Anyone care to come up with an estimate on how many base stations would be needed to cover all the US? I bet it's a lot!
US Surface Area 3,618,770 square miles
1 square mile = 27878400 square feet
802.11b radius 300 yards (outside) or 900 feet
Area of circle = pi r^2
Area of base station coverage = pi *(900^2) = 2544615
base stations per square mile asuming perfect coverage = square mile in feet / area covered by base station = 27878400 / 2544615 10.955+, or for all practical purposes 11.
That means we need 11 * 3,618,770 or 39,806,470 base stations for 802.11b coverage.
If you assume that each base station, including required infrastructure to support it (minimum requirements solar cells, storage batteries, built in routing software/hardware) were $100 (in the volumes we are talking here I think we can get some discounts...) you are looking at the stray 3.9 billion that worldcom misplaced in it's accounting records.
The perfect coverage assumption is based upon the assumption that there is neither overlap, nor dead space. With circular coverage patterns you can not get that kind of coverage. You will always have some of one or the other. However this calculation does provide an estimate for an average overlap and blind spots.
Oh, source of surface area information was a 1991 copy of the World Almanac, and the area does include a lot of water surface that could be partially eliminated.
-Rusty
The BeOS kernel was the source of BeOS's performance. The Linux kernel is a fine kernel for a platform based around making use of the software that was written for operating systems that came before Linux.
That does not mean that it would not be possible to build a varient of BeOS that runs with a Linux kernel, in fact there was an effort to build just such a platform. I have not heard a lot form them lately, which may be an indication of the people involved all being short of time, or possibly problems with the implementation of the vision.
On top of everything else, the developers made a decision to go the direction they took. That decision may not jive with your opinion, it may not even jive with documentable facts. However the decision has been made, and they are running with it.
If you really want to figure out why they made the choices they did, feel free to go to their web site and see if you can understand from that.
-Rusty
Perhaps I am wrong, I expect that I am for some situatins.
In any case, I don't recall anyone askin the guy building the helicopter in his garage if there was a market for the thing. Or the handyman who puts together a skiff out of some plywood and marine glue and fibreglass.
In my opinion, the folks working on OpenBeOS are highly skilled craftsmen who are using their tallents on their own time, to work on a project that interests them. If the end result of that project is a product that only they use, I doubt that they are going to be particularly disapointed.
At the same time, I am one of perhaps dozens or hundreds who are looking for an update to BeOS that will allow me to use new hardware that BeOS does not support. Not because I can't use BeOS now, I do. Because I would like to go back to using an OS that performs the way BeOS does, and that I can use newer hardware and peripherals with. To me that makes OpenBeOS worth while, and worth following.
Then again, I won't force that view down your throat. If you insist that the handyman building a boat in his back yard, on his own time, do a marketing study on the demand for personal watercraft, I think I can afford to compliment him on his work and help him get it to the water when he is ready to do that.
-Rusty
Defiately off topic. Yahoo-Reuters story suggests it is a self inflicted gunshot to the head. As has already been noted, Gene does not appear to have had any involvement in OpenBeOS, much less being one of the founders. If you have other information, I would be impressed if you could produce a viable reference.
-Rusty
I am not about to disparage security by any means. Without it the company I work for would not be on the Internet. Even so there are a couple of considerations to take in when working with an OS and determining if multi-user is required.
First of all note that BeOS had hooks built into it for multi-user opportunities. The default user-id is Baron, not root. There are add-ons that provide a multi-user environment as well.
There are down sides to having a muli-user platform as well. There are situations where it makes sense to have the OS come up and start running a user application. Tivo is one example, Internet radio stations are another.
That said, one of the down sides of having a multi-user system is the very thing that makes it handy to have. Adding cycles to authenticate access slows down a platform.
Also note that if little brother is dedicated to finding a way to delete big sister's homework, the fact that the platform is multi-user, with ACLs, does not prevent little brother from being paitent and finding bit sister's password, or breaking the SU password and getting to the file.
Actally having to re-install an OS is nothing compared to losing some data. For example the password file to your online bank account, or your graduate thesus and supporting documentation. The OS is either available on redilly available CD-Rom disks, or other handy resources. If you have spent months collecting and analyzing data, putting together your paper, you probably can't re-create it overnight. If your Online checkbook is compromised, it very well may cost you significanly more than the value of your time and materials to re-build your system.
Then again, it apperars that you have different ideas, so I could be wrong.
-Rusty
I made a very brief test of both layouts, awef ijio; and qefb njip, and found that the awef jio; felt both more natural, and resulted in fewwer errors. (I was continuously retyping in the second layout, yet almost had no problems at all with the first.)
I think part of this is that at the very least the index and pinkies were where they were expected to be, and the middle fingers were ok moving around.
I will give this a bit more of a workout myself, and see if my error rate and speed improve.
-Rusty
Point 2, requires providing reasonable evidence that the manufacturers are acting as a cartel, not simply the accusation.
I might point out that it requires some very strong evidence, not just the observation that they are behaving publicly as a cartel.
If public behaviour were sufficent, you could sue the major oil companies. Ever notice how all their unrelated gas stations are adjusting their prices on the same day, always to within a couple of pennies of each other? That is cartel like behaviour. However because the managers of the various gas stations do not talk with each other, and come to an agreement ahead of time, providing each station with a schedule of when to adjust prices, and by how much, they are not defined as a cartel.
There are other reasons for the price changes happening as they do. Reasons like the amount each station is paying for gasoline delivered. The fact that the manager of one station observes that the manager of another station has dropped that station's prices and drivers are going to that station now.
Likewise for delership mechanics having "proprietary" information. That "fact" is not sufficient to take a collection of car companies to court for acting as a cartel. However it is very much cartel like behaviour.
-Rusty
Um, by definition of Patent, if their assembly equipment is patented, then it is open. (of course the fact that it is patented means that they get to charge other people using that same assembly equipment royalties...)
-Rusty
Exactly. The process they have used to ensure copy protection is similar to setting up a booby trap to protect your house. Even if you post notices that the booby trap exists, you are still liable for any damage that that booby trap causes.
The labeling of the CD in english that it is not intended for computer use, is insufficient. The city I live in has speakers of English, Spanish, Arabic, Hmong, and Viet in large quantities, including many who only speak that language. Any warning label at a minimum must cover all of these languages, and even that will not cover the significant portion of the population who does not know how to read, but can use a computer.
Exactly how much reading knowledge is involved in using a CD Player on a computer? You turn the computer on, wait for the pretty pictures to settle down for a little bit, hit the eject button on the CD-Rom drive (if necessary) put the CD in the drive, wait for the CD Player software to start up, and hit the button that looks like a single arrow, [||/|>]. Even your two year old could follow those instructions if they were read to him or her, translated into whatever language is necessary. That may not be the way you have your computer set up, but I am reasonably confident that your computer (if not built by you from components) was originally configured to work that way once the computer was ready to use.
-Rusty
One of the problems with using the copy protection scheams that have been presented, is that a music pirate that removes that copy protection and starts to distribute CDs without it, has a product that has more value to consumers than the original.
Worse is that it is very rare that the people who are affected by copy protection of this nature are affected because they are going to pirate and distribute the music. These people are engaged in completely legal archiving of their music, as well as making lower quality copies for use in portable media devices.
-Rusty
Input Devices/ports
Features/Applications
- CPU fast enough to keep up with the tasks required
- Memory
- sufficient internal memory to deal with a managers e-mail volume
- cf and sd memory ports for MP3 storage
- optional memory stick port if device is made by sony
- ES-based PIM
- Can interact with Outlook, Outlook Express, Evolution, Gnome Office, Koffice, Lotus Organizer, etc. to caapture known scheduled events, and put them in the schedules so that others who need to be able to schedule meetings with you know what time you have available
- It will also parse inbox e-mail, auto-filing informational messages, Identifying spam by content, and handling appropriately, (either simply discarding, or identifying the real source of the spam and notifying the ISP where the message came from of the breach in security.)
- Anti-virus features of recognizing when e-mail contains viri, dealing with it appropriately.
- Inteligently handles apointment requests. If it is from your boss, it may preempt an existing appointment, and forward a cancelation notice on that appointment, (or at lest pend such a notice, allowing you to make that decision)
- Book Reader
- games
- financial management software
- text-telephony
- There may be times when you want to place a phone call to someone who is deaf, so you could do so through an IM client, or you may not be able to speak yourself, so a typing to speach feature might be nice as well.
Are there more? Sure. I would love to be able to say, "I am taking Mindy out to eat tonight." and the ES should be able to identify whom Mindy is, find an appropriate place for us to eat, check with me for approval on the selection of eating places, show me the menu, allow me to select what to eat for both of us, reserve eating space arrangements, if appropriate, select the wine from the resturant's inventory, compare resturant reservation times with schedules for movies in the area, suggest a movie that Mindy might like, if the occasion warrents, make arangements for limo or taxi transportation, confirm that my checkbook reserves cover the expenses, including maximum tips (even if I am not going to tip that much) Interacting with Mindy's PDA as appropriate, (give her the option of selecting her own dinner, without revealing the choice of resturant if possible, getting Mindy's preferences in movies or other entertainment, and setting up an appointment on her callendar as needed.)I also happen to think it would be a good idea if it would interact with my car for scheduled maintenance, my house automation system for security and lights controls (both when I am in the house and when I am away.)
Then again, those are just some of my ideas, I have also liked many of the others proposed.
OS? OpenBeOS, or QNX possibly, something very close to real time.
-Rusty
I don't recall if any of the tests in the past have tried it, but one way to check out Cyc's status would be to use it a the back end of a program participating in a Turring test.
Another use would be to prime a nural net with a set of "known facts" and see how well the net takes off from there.
Just because a tool on it's own isn't particularly userful, doesn't mean that it will not be usefull as a component of some other tool.
-Rusty
I won't argue that this is not an AI, however it is learning. I have read several articles over the years on Cyc, and am impressed with some of the methods they have used to get it to learn. As an example to speed up the process, they have had Cyc reading through newspapers, and proposing new rules based upon what it reads. Before the rules it 'develops' are put in place, they are reviewed and either denyied or approved.
To some degree I would rather have an expert system based upon a database of rules than a true AI, in that if a corrupted rule gets in place it can be easily excised and the system can move on.
For a nural net to do what Cyc can already do would require significantly more data processing than is generally available today. In honesty, I think that to build a nural net with even some of these capabilites would require a significantly sized cluster, similar to (in hardware) a Beowolf cluster, but wired as a partial mesh rather than a tree.
Then of course there is the obligatory "imagine a beowolf cluster of these" comment...
-Rusty
Getting slightly off topic here, but I would point out that the vehicle is using at least four point seat belts. I have no doubt that the desingers are very concerned about the safety of this vehicle. It is also a test vehicle rather than a prototype.
At the other end of this is the fact that percieved safety on the part of the driver has an inverse ration to the results of colisions. i.e. if the driver percieves the vehicle as safe, the results of accidents the driver is in are worse.
One way to think about it is how much more attention would you pay to the environment you are driving in, if you were told that the air-bag electronics were wired to a couple of sticks of dynamite under your seat. As long as you prevented yourself from being in an accident, you would survive.
-Rusty
Gasoline is a fluid with weight characteristics similar to water. 1 gallon of water weighs 8 lb, one liter of water weighs 1 kg. Gasoline is slightly lighter (floats on water) but this vehicle runs on Diesel, which I don't remember it's actual weight properties. As a result I am assuming that it is also similar to water, someone can provide the correct numbers.
.18% of the weight of the car. I do not know what the crossover point for this vehicle is, but at some point the added weight for a full tank, with expected passenger load will result in lower millage figures than they designers think is acceptable.
At five gallons, or just under 20 liters, the weight of the fule is 5*8/22000 or just over
The average range for cars on a full tank of gas isn't much differnt than this vehicles range. Both are significantly longer than most purely electric's 75-100 mile range. Though for 99% of my needs, 75-100 miles is more than sufficient.
400 miles at 70 mph (average freeway speeds) is over 5 hours of driving.
But then I don't speak for how you use your car.
-Rusty
Social contracts are quasi binding. If you live in a neighborhood that has a public standards commitee, you may have a binding contract without signature, or word of mouth, that may easily exceed $500. For example if the public standards commitee decrees that houses on the block may not be painted white, with black trim, and you subsequently move in, and repaint the house white with black trim, the social contract you live in that neighborhood under may require that you either re-paint the house, or have the house re-painted.
The cost may easily exceed $500 to you, but may be offset by increasing the value of the adjoining properties in the neighborhood by virtue of the house being in agreement with local paint standards.
This is not the only type of social contract you participate in. Open air concerts generally do not hire squadrons of armed security personel to gaurd the perimiter, however the vast majority of people do purchase tickets and attend by passing through the gates with a valid ticket. This is a social contract with a written contract on top of it. (tickets being considered written contractual material.)
There are several other social contracts that you comply with, for example you and your co-workers may have an agreement to dress in some group co-ordinated style, where the office clothing code does not specify more than buisness attire, shirt and tie with jacket for meetings for men, business dress for women, casual fridays. Casual fridays in most businesses does not mean t-shirt and cut-offs, but may be interpreted as anything from a flanel or polo shirt with clean un-torn jeans, up to dockers, turtleneck and daily business shoes. How you interpret it is part of the social contract you have with your co-workers.
Another way to look at that cable contract is that it is a monthly re-curring contract for $50 a month. It also may not be entirely a verbal contract in that when you signed off on the installer's completion paperwork, you may also have signed a contract for the service to be rendered. This contract (as with your credit cards) may be ammended by an insert in your monthly bill.
Part of this contract idea that broadcasters have (which I am not entirely in agreement with) is that if you get up during a comercial break, to get snacks, or relieve yourself, the possibility exists that you will return to the program some time after the comercials have ended. Without a rewind capability, or pause option, you stand to loose as much the entertainment value of the show, as the advertizer believes they have lost in walk-aways. PVR's change that.
-Rusty
You will have to look pretty hard for a jukbox6000, I don't think they are on the market any more. Check E-bay. Considering one of it's capabilities is a 6G USB hard drive, street value is proably under $200 now.
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My recollection is that I saw a Studio, or Recorder version with a 20G drive for approx $350 last month at either Micro Center, or CompUSA. BestBuy currently has the Archos Jukbox Recorder 20, listed at $319 (my purchase price was listed at $299 when I put it in my cart) URL is http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=11101124&m=48
Prices apparently have come down. BestBuy also has the recorder in a 10G capacity, so you might find that workable instead. Price given for that is $259. Free shipping on all portable mp3 players.
Then again, I have relatives who either do or have worked for BestBuy. If you can find a better price somewhere else, and I think you probably can, go get it at the better price.
-Rusty
It may be reverse engineering, but unless I miss my guesse, that will not be a problem as far as the DMCA is concerned, as what was reverse engineered was not a means of retaining secure control of a media product. What was reverse engineered was the means of using a product that does not have access controls built into it.
There may be UCITA or EULA violations involved, however I don't expect that the people at Archos are interested in persuing that at this time. I personally don't think they want to be on the loosing side of a court battle over either EULA or UCITA.
Then again, IANAL.
-Rusty