It's good to see GPS in more and more products. But with the EU GPS project on hold/cancelled, I wonder what is going to become of the Russian GLONASS system.
Aparently it has over 100 dead satellites and availability is erratic.. are there any devices that use the GLONASS system and the NAVSTAR one at the same time to enhance location accuracy, or is GLONASS utterly useless?
Apparently CDMA phone towers already do it well.. they have to, that's half the beauty of CDMA! It can use the same set of frequencies for multiple concurrent callers, by directing the different mobile phone links of the same frequency from different sides of the tower.
Can't remember how many times over it can reuse a set bands, but it allows CDMA to be fairly efficient. Perhaps GSM towers do it as well though, in which case my point is moot...
The whole point of wxWindows, as opposed to Qt is that it DOES look like the underlying OS... like when XP came out, wxApps took on the look of XP themes automagically, Qt apps still looked win95...
How many gnome ones can you mention? Debian (oops thats gnome 1.4), Redhat? Nope redhat isn't popular on the desktop, its designed for servers? Sun? Nope, its just a way to force slow java technology down our throats!
You should take up comedy:-)
Seriously though, I have said this before, wxWindows certainly gives Qt a run for its money.
Satellite uplinks - aren't they a serious affair?
on
Mobile Internet Down Under
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I don't know how powerful two-way telstra satellite is, but I know that satellite uplink stations are supposed to be taken very seriously. There are restrictions on power levels, aiming accuracy, signal polarisation, etc. It's my understanding that you only have to be out by 1 degree and you could really piss off some satellite company by interfering with their own uplinks.
Perhaps Telstra 2way is weak enough that no-one really cares...
The shop I worked at "finally got rid of" the linux box we had doing hosting/nat/dialup, replaced it with 2003.
Of course now all the 2003 box does is NAT for the lan, everything else is off site..
Reason? Boss didn't like that they had to rely on outsiders to maintain something that no-one full-time in house understood. Can't blame them I guess. Sometimes people don't have time to learn alternatives, they just want the nail hit with the most convenient hammer.
- Paul
Re:T4 dying is a good thing.... Sorta
on
Telstar 4 is Down
·
· Score: 1
Waiting to die? It was launched in '95 and was expected to complete 12 years service.
http://www.cyberstar.com/fleet/telstar4/t4ov_us.as p
"Began service: 11/95"
http://www.cyberstar.com/fleet/telstar4/tech_doc4. pdf
"Telstar 4 is a three-axis-stabilized hybrid satellite capable of providing both C-band and Ku-band communications coverage to CONUS, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico/U.S. Virgin Islands for 12 years."
That means that if it survived to 2007, it made it's mission. As far as I can tell, it's stopped short...
So I'm a smart-arse;-)
- Paul
Are you serious? ATI OpenGL acceleration works pretty much out of the box for most Linux boxes I've set up, except for my own PC which is probably due to my hardware combination..
NVIDIA on the other hand, what a pain in the arse... especially trying to set up nForce, what a turd.
NVIDIA is easier these days, apparently, but I still compile my own kernel modules. Once it's working it's fine but I *have* had lockups switching between X sessions, or switching from a movie to VMWare, on more than one PC.
- Paul
Actually, I'm using a Radeon 9000 with my KT400 chipset under kernel 2.6-test5 just fine... this kernel is the first one since 2.4.21rc2-ac2 that doesn't suck for 3D acceleration (I had wierd MTRR problems with all kernels up to now, getting like 3FPS for hardware accelerated OpenGL apps where software mode would be 30FPS).
As far as stability goes, haven't had any glitches or crashes. Though I must say it's annoying only having OpenGL accelerated apps in one X session at a time.
I'm fairly sure my troubles come from my combination of hardware.
Ahh yes, http://home.comcast.net/~vbriel/r1_4.jpg shows a better view. Perhaps the Apple 1 had a good start, but damn... the VIC20/C64 has to be my favourite 8bit micro;-)
I agree with you, but I don't think there is much more Microsoft can do: it was my understanding that M$ already had quite significant development R&D operations in Shanghai/Beijing already.
http://www.cnoutsourcing.com/News/news26.asp
Microsoft builds R&D Dream Team in Beijing
Forget giant basketball players with slick moves. Meet the newest Dream Team, an international group of engineers and scientists Microsoft Corp. has assembled at its research center in Beijing and funded with $80 million over six years - a fortune in economically challenged China. The Dream Team will use the $80 million to develop technologies for use in China and other parts of the world, after having already explored three aspects of software development.
http://www.huayuan.org/event.php?ID=37
Before joining Cisco, Duh spent five years with Microsoft China first as general manager of the representative office, and later as president of Microsoft China, the wholly owned subsidiary.
During his tenure with Microsoft, Duh grew the software company's PRC revenue by more than 100 times, and saw the number of employees expand from less than 20 to more than 250. As general manager, he established Microsoft in China as a full-fledged functional subsidiary that comprises sales and marketing, consulting, manufacturing, R&D, support, and publishing. One of Duh's key achievements has been to help Microsoft build up solid, lasting relationships with the PRC government and key opinion leaders in China.
It's not a good source, but it's out there... google for "microsoft china r&d".
They should have said "... possibly the best commercial microkernel-RTOS OS for embedded systems.."
A life support system, pick'n place robot, or a plant monitoring/control system, or your submarine's navigation and control system etc. running Mac OS X is going to need 256MB RAM and 10GB HDD...
By comparison QNX is designed from the ground up to be a true RTOS, responding to real time signals reliably and FAR faster than MacOS X or any other desktop OS could possibly hope for. It's not just bragging, it is fact. It was designed to beat normal OSes in this regard. And it does it with less.
IIRC QNX will boot quite happily with little more than 16MB RAM, a 100MHz CPU, and some flash rom. Perfect for tiny mission critical embeded systems; a single board computer, no HDD, low power consumption, low profile, with performance, features, a good dev enviornment and flexibility to boot. Environmental considerations: you can easily box up a custom SBC to be x-ray/microwave/radiation/water/weather/vibration proof. Big companies with lots of money use custom embedded systems. An iBook running MacOS X 'aint gonna get you there.
Also, IIRC QNX has extensive, documented, certified/standards based QA in testing and development, which companies using an OS for mission critical embedded systems just can't get (but really need) from many other solutions.
About no manufacturers using parallel charging. Have you ever wondered why there are so many terminals on a battery pack?
I'm not a laptop expert but I am an engineering student...
My own (old) DEC Laptop (a P166MMX) has an interesting charge arrangment. Firstly the PWM for the switch-mode power supply circuitry in the power pack is controlled by the laptop (hence the three pins on the power connector on the laptop) so the machine can regulate the voltage rather than relying on the power pack (and also, I guess, switch to a lower power consumption/voltage when the machine is in standby). Secondly, the battery pack consists of nine cells - arranged in three parrallel groups of three in series (they are 3.2v cells so you get 10V).
It seems to charge each parrallel group of three individually - since current flows into the wires at each node when charging (three groups in series == 4 nodes end-to-end).
So it seems my Laptop does charge the cells in parallel - not just all in series-at-once:)
I'm studying Micro-Electronic-Engineering here at Griffith, Brisbane, Australia.
This all sounds much like the degree I'm doing, where after two years of a common program you can spend the remaining two years on either "computer systems" or "communications".
At least here, 3G etc. is treated like any other standard in communications; we're taught all the fundamental theory, as well as practical applications and important working examples, so that we can pick up anything else fairly easy if we have to, such as CDMA, GSM, bluetooth, 802.x, etc.
BTW I had a lecturer who was the guy who did the speech compression for GSM mobile phones;)
Yes, that does appear to be annoying, but I hardly think my local public school is going to have the teachers there reading my email (I use a friend's email server anyway).
The "without a warrant" part implies that they needed a warrant before. "The government" - there are many, too many levels of government. We're not talking about road workers or the admin at the local hospital here.
As for unscrupulus govt. employees, that's always going to be true - I hear in the USA there are unscrupulus police doing dodgy doings (merely out of rumor, I obviously don't know that as fact), so of course the potential is always there.
I wouldn't mind if it was just the Police that had these powers now but since you're implying other departments have access to everyone's email/sms/voicemail, hrmm. I don't quite believe it. I'll have to look it up. I doubt it will pass if it's just a free-for-all like you suggest.
If non-police departments have access to this kind of personal information, I believe the government would love to use it for detecting Centrelink (welfare) and Tax fraud. They absolutely love to spend billions on these detection systems - simply because we're spending billions on people scamming the system; however there are horror stories; many of those not scamming the system have been thrown around by Centrelink by not declaring change of circumstances - my mother had to help a woman who had completely run out of food (single mum + kid) because she was too ashamed to ask for help before about her payments being cut off because centrelink found out she had moved away from her abusive husband... "change of circumstance" see, she didn't notify them, she got cut off.
There are lots of things wrong out there, it annoys me sometimes we make even more errors rather than fix anything. Centrelink has an information/data gathering/processing system that would make NASA cry. (well not really, but you get what I mean).. The government loves to throw money at problems to make them go away. Sometimes it makes it worse (like the controversial topic of the statitiscs of Aboriginal families going through generations of welfare dependancy with no way out: what does the government do? Give them more money, instead of activly training them or SOMETHING)
Anyway, my point is not "any government agency", surely, if so, point me to the bill number/paragraph and I'll have a look for myself.
riiiiight... how did they take away warrant protections? What are you talking about?
The only thing I can possibly imagine you are thinking of is questioning a civilian. A couple of years ago it was possible for a policeman to come up to a random civilian, ask some questions and the civilian was allowed to just walk away and not say anything. Now, you still have that right, but changes were made so that if a policeman thinks it is worthwhile, they can take you to the station for questioning.. I think.. can't remember the details. Anyway, point is, they can't keep you there until you are actually arrested and even then you are still allowed to "remain silent".
. The criteria/procedure for arrest is still the same.
. Warrents are still given out the same as they always were - by a Magistrate who has to believe that the situation deserves/fits criteria for a warrant; ie. there is sufficient evidence, the crime is bad enough, etc.
. The only other thing I can think of is perhaps drug raids; warrants are still needed for public raids, but on private property... hrmm I still think you need a warrant but maybe it was made easier to get, or something.
What a bunch of wankers you all are. From a tiny window (a slashdot article) you can judge that the sky is falling in Australia, abandon ship, evacuate...
Well I live here (in Queensland) and what can I say. This will never get through. The politicians argue the absolute bloody crap out of everything, even themselves, and even the sensible bills that really should pass without even a second glance are debated for weeks/months/years not over their content but for political brownie points.. can you imagine how unspeakably pathetic the parilement session will be like when this baby gets to being debated?
The political system in Australia sucks because of the friggin massive beuracracy involved. It is so damn slow, and the two major political parties are extraordinarily anti-constructive - they argue about EVERYTHING simply because they think it's their f*cking job, "I'm the opposision therefore I must oppose _EVERYTHING_" kind of attitude.
Hmmf. I knew people were ignorant of other people, but jeez... what do you take us for?
Are any of you aware that we have a federal government that has no representation in ANY of the states? That's right. "Everyone" voted the liberal party to run the Federal government, and for the state elections the labor party won each of the states. Kinda funny huh? You can imagine how little gets done.
Simon Creamy: So.. sorry about that bitch fight the other day in parliament.. can we get a federal grant to build a new hospital/invest in Universities?
Peter cost-a-lot: Johnny says no, screw education, go to a private Uni/school, we've gotta "protect our borders" or something...
Hehe come to think of it that was kinda lame. Anyway I'm off to the real world.
Huh? Name one phone exchange in Australia that isn't digital. I used to live "in the middle of nowhere" in a town with less than 20 people... we had a fibre optic miniexchange; before that, a DCRS microwave radio tower...which come to think of it was analogue? Ok, so maybe about 1000 remaining isolated farms around the country with a microwave-link would be analogue.
I live on Campus at a university in Brisbane. Here, in Brisbane, you will see XBOX bill boards, signs, bus stop posters, bus ads, newspaper ads etc.
But that's not all. The constant, continuous, uninterrupted supply of XBOX posters all over the university.
When the XBOX launch happend in Australia, Microsoft hired out an entire lecture theatre here for a few weeks just to demo these things to the public. They put posters all over the university; but never have we seen any other commercial advertising in the same place - on notice boards for faculties/schools, outside theatres; but that's not all.
Typical commercialised Griffith Uni... ooops did I say that...
Like I said I live on campus. Microsoft jerks *actually* came around to all the floors in the building I live in (and probably all the others too) and wrote on our message boards, dropped pamphlets everywhere, chalked demo times/dates on the concrete for us, put up posters (not just one here and there, at least 3 at a time) and it was just a constant stream.
I've never seen anything like it. So me and some friends made pirate hats out of the XBOX posters and showed up to a public campus demo. Without our consent, they took two photos (one wide, one closeup) of us and said "now you're going on the internet". I don't know if we really are on the 'net. If they did, they would probably say "hey look at these XBOX fans". It's so gay...
Some folks went around and put stickers on ALL XBOX posters saying "This company has performed an illegal operation. If this problem persists, stop using their software". If you look close at the photo (if you ever see three dudes in pirate hats on the 'net, please let me know), you should see on at least one of the hats one such sticker.
I can only conclude MS spent far more on advertising than actual development... too bad it still smells.
- Paul
Slashdot Mirror
Aparently it has over 100 dead satellites and availability is erratic.. are there any devices that use the GLONASS system and the NAVSTAR one at the same time to enhance location accuracy, or is GLONASS utterly useless?
Apparently CDMA phone towers already do it well.. they have to, that's half the beauty of CDMA! It can use the same set of frequencies for multiple concurrent callers, by directing the different mobile phone links of the same frequency from different sides of the tower. Can't remember how many times over it can reuse a set bands, but it allows CDMA to be fairly efficient. Perhaps GSM towers do it as well though, in which case my point is moot...
The whole point of wxWindows, as opposed to Qt is that it DOES look like the underlying OS... like when XP came out, wxApps took on the look of XP themes automagically, Qt apps still looked win95...
You should take up comedy
Seriously though, I have said this before, wxWindows certainly gives Qt a run for its money.
- Paul
Oops, the wxWindows embedded link is:
http://www.wxwindows.org/embedded.htm
wxwindows
I don't know how powerful two-way telstra satellite is, but I know that satellite uplink stations are supposed to be taken very seriously. There are restrictions on power levels, aiming accuracy, signal polarisation, etc. It's my understanding that you only have to be out by 1 degree and you could really piss off some satellite company by interfering with their own uplinks.
Perhaps Telstra 2way is weak enough that no-one really cares...
The shop I worked at "finally got rid of" the linux box we had doing hosting/nat/dialup, replaced it with 2003. Of course now all the 2003 box does is NAT for the lan, everything else is off site.. Reason? Boss didn't like that they had to rely on outsiders to maintain something that no-one full-time in house understood. Can't blame them I guess. Sometimes people don't have time to learn alternatives, they just want the nail hit with the most convenient hammer. - Paul
Waiting to die? It was launched in '95 and was expected to complete 12 years service. http://www.cyberstar.com/fleet/telstar4/t4ov_us.as p
"Began service: 11/95"
http://www.cyberstar.com/fleet/telstar4/tech_doc4. pdf
"Telstar 4 is a three-axis-stabilized hybrid satellite capable of providing both C-band and Ku-band communications coverage to CONUS, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico/U.S. Virgin Islands for 12 years."
That means that if it survived to 2007, it made it's mission. As far as I can tell, it's stopped short...
So I'm a smart-arse ;-)
- Paul
Are you serious? ATI OpenGL acceleration works pretty much out of the box for most Linux boxes I've set up, except for my own PC which is probably due to my hardware combination.. NVIDIA on the other hand, what a pain in the arse... especially trying to set up nForce, what a turd. NVIDIA is easier these days, apparently, but I still compile my own kernel modules. Once it's working it's fine but I *have* had lockups switching between X sessions, or switching from a movie to VMWare, on more than one PC. - Paul
Actually, I'm using a Radeon 9000 with my KT400 chipset under kernel 2.6-test5 just fine... this kernel is the first one since 2.4.21rc2-ac2 that doesn't suck for 3D acceleration (I had wierd MTRR problems with all kernels up to now, getting like 3FPS for hardware accelerated OpenGL apps where software mode would be 30FPS).
As far as stability goes, haven't had any glitches or crashes. Though I must say it's annoying only having OpenGL accelerated apps in one X session at a time.
I'm fairly sure my troubles come from my combination of hardware.
- Paul
Ahh yes, http://home.comcast.net/~vbriel/r1_4.jpg shows a better view. Perhaps the Apple 1 had a good start, but damn... the VIC20/C64 has to be my favourite 8bit micro ;-)
Is it just me or does the bezel on the NTSC video monitor have the Commodore logo on it (with the rainbow bit to the right)
http://www.cnoutsourcing.com/News/news26.asp
http://www.huayuan.org/event.php?ID=37
It's not a good source, but it's out there... google for "microsoft china r&d".
- Paul
They should have said "... possibly the best commercial microkernel-RTOS OS for embedded systems.."
A life support system, pick'n place robot, or a plant monitoring/control system, or your submarine's navigation and control system etc. running Mac OS X is going to need 256MB RAM and 10GB HDD...
By comparison QNX is designed from the ground up to be a true RTOS, responding to real time signals reliably and FAR faster than MacOS X or any other desktop OS could possibly hope for. It's not just bragging, it is fact. It was designed to beat normal OSes in this regard. And it does it with less.
IIRC QNX will boot quite happily with little more than 16MB RAM, a 100MHz CPU, and some flash rom. Perfect for tiny mission critical embeded systems; a single board computer, no HDD, low power consumption, low profile, with performance, features, a good dev enviornment and flexibility to boot. Environmental considerations: you can easily box up a custom SBC to be x-ray/microwave/radiation/water/weather/vibration proof. Big companies with lots of money use custom embedded systems. An iBook running MacOS X 'aint gonna get you there.
Also, IIRC QNX has extensive, documented, certified/standards based QA in testing and development, which companies using an OS for mission critical embedded systems just can't get (but really need) from many other solutions.
- Paul
About no manufacturers using parallel charging. Have you ever wondered why there are so many terminals on a battery pack?
:)
I'm not a laptop expert but I am an engineering student...
My own (old) DEC Laptop (a P166MMX) has an interesting charge arrangment. Firstly the PWM for the switch-mode power supply circuitry in the power pack is controlled by the laptop (hence the three pins on the power connector on the laptop) so the machine can regulate the voltage rather than relying on the power pack (and also, I guess, switch to a lower power consumption/voltage when the machine is in standby). Secondly, the battery pack consists of nine cells - arranged in three parrallel groups of three in series (they are 3.2v cells so you get 10V).
It seems to charge each parrallel group of three individually - since current flows into the wires at each node when charging (three groups in series == 4 nodes end-to-end).
So it seems my Laptop does charge the cells in parallel - not just all in series-at-once
- Paul
This all sounds much like the degree I'm doing, where after two years of a common program you can spend the remaining two years on either "computer systems" or "communications".
http://www.gu.edu.au/ua/aa/pccat/program/1149_01.h tm
(go to "program stucture" down the bottom)
At least here, 3G etc. is treated like any other standard in communications; we're taught all the fundamental theory, as well as practical applications and important working examples, so that we can pick up anything else fairly easy if we have to, such as CDMA, GSM, bluetooth, 802.x, etc.
BTW I had a lecturer who was the guy who did the speech compression for GSM mobile phones ;)
- Paul
actually, it's like 7.someting minutes from sun to the earth, so no, not as much as 17 minutes...
:)
I guess we could all do the simple calculation time = distance/speed, but niether of us could be buggered, eh?
- Paul
,
Yes, that does appear to be annoying, but I hardly think my local public school is going to have the teachers there reading my email (I use a friend's email server anyway).
The "without a warrant" part implies that they needed a warrant before. "The government" - there are many, too many levels of government. We're not talking about road workers or the admin at the local hospital here.
As for unscrupulus govt. employees, that's always going to be true - I hear in the USA there are unscrupulus police doing dodgy doings (merely out of rumor, I obviously don't know that as fact), so of course the potential is always there.
I wouldn't mind if it was just the Police that had these powers now but since you're implying other departments have access to everyone's email/sms/voicemail, hrmm. I don't quite believe it. I'll have to look it up. I doubt it will pass if it's just a free-for-all like you suggest.
If non-police departments have access to this kind of personal information, I believe the government would love to use it for detecting Centrelink (welfare) and Tax fraud. They absolutely love to spend billions on these detection systems - simply because we're spending billions on people scamming the system; however there are horror stories; many of those not scamming the system have been thrown around by Centrelink by not declaring change of circumstances - my mother had to help a woman who had completely run out of food (single mum + kid) because she was too ashamed to ask for help before about her payments being cut off because centrelink found out she had moved away from her abusive husband... "change of circumstance" see, she didn't notify them, she got cut off.
There are lots of things wrong out there, it annoys me sometimes we make even more errors rather than fix anything. Centrelink has an information/data gathering/processing system that would make NASA cry. (well not really, but you get what I mean).. The government loves to throw money at problems to make them go away. Sometimes it makes it worse (like the controversial topic of the statitiscs of Aboriginal families going through generations of welfare dependancy with no way out: what does the government do? Give them more money, instead of activly training them or SOMETHING)
Anyway, my point is not "any government agency", surely, if so, point me to the bill number/paragraph and I'll have a look for myself.
- Paul
riiiiight... how did they take away warrant protections? What are you talking about?
The only thing I can possibly imagine you are thinking of is questioning a civilian. A couple of years ago it was possible for a policeman to come up to a random civilian, ask some questions and the civilian was allowed to just walk away and not say anything. Now, you still have that right, but changes were made so that if a policeman thinks it is worthwhile, they can take you to the station for questioning.. I think.. can't remember the details. Anyway, point is, they can't keep you there until you are actually arrested and even then you are still allowed to "remain silent".
. The criteria/procedure for arrest is still the same.
. Warrents are still given out the same as they always were - by a Magistrate who has to believe that the situation deserves/fits criteria for a warrant; ie. there is sufficient evidence, the crime is bad enough, etc.
. The only other thing I can think of is perhaps drug raids; warrants are still needed for public raids, but on private property... hrmm I still think you need a warrant but maybe it was made easier to get, or something.
- Paul
What a bunch of wankers you all are. From a tiny window (a slashdot article) you can judge that the sky is falling in Australia, abandon ship, evacuate...
Well I live here (in Queensland) and what can I say. This will never get through. The politicians argue the absolute bloody crap out of everything, even themselves, and even the sensible bills that really should pass without even a second glance are debated for weeks/months/years not over their content but for political brownie points.. can you imagine how unspeakably pathetic the parilement session will be like when this baby gets to being debated?
The political system in Australia sucks because of the friggin massive beuracracy involved. It is so damn slow, and the two major political parties are extraordinarily anti-constructive - they argue about EVERYTHING simply because they think it's their f*cking job, "I'm the opposision therefore I must oppose _EVERYTHING_" kind of attitude.
Hmmf. I knew people were ignorant of other people, but jeez... what do you take us for?
Are any of you aware that we have a federal government that has no representation in ANY of the states? That's right. "Everyone" voted the liberal party to run the Federal government, and for the state elections the labor party won each of the states. Kinda funny huh? You can imagine how little gets done.
Simon Creamy: So.. sorry about that bitch fight the other day in parliament.. can we get a federal grant to build a new hospital/invest in Universities?
Peter cost-a-lot: Johnny says no, screw education, go to a private Uni/school, we've gotta "protect our borders" or something...
Hehe come to think of it that was kinda lame. Anyway I'm off to the real world.
- Paul
Huh? Name one phone exchange in Australia that isn't digital. I used to live "in the middle of nowhere" in a town with less than 20 people... we had a fibre optic miniexchange; before that, a DCRS microwave radio tower.. .which come to think of it was analogue? Ok, so maybe about 1000 remaining isolated farms around the country with a microwave-link would be analogue.
- Paul
I live on Campus at a university in Brisbane. Here, in Brisbane, you will see XBOX bill boards, signs, bus stop posters, bus ads, newspaper ads etc. But that's not all. The constant, continuous, uninterrupted supply of XBOX posters all over the university. When the XBOX launch happend in Australia, Microsoft hired out an entire lecture theatre here for a few weeks just to demo these things to the public. They put posters all over the university; but never have we seen any other commercial advertising in the same place - on notice boards for faculties/schools, outside theatres; but that's not all. Typical commercialised Griffith Uni... ooops did I say that... Like I said I live on campus. Microsoft jerks *actually* came around to all the floors in the building I live in (and probably all the others too) and wrote on our message boards, dropped pamphlets everywhere, chalked demo times/dates on the concrete for us, put up posters (not just one here and there, at least 3 at a time) and it was just a constant stream. I've never seen anything like it. So me and some friends made pirate hats out of the XBOX posters and showed up to a public campus demo. Without our consent, they took two photos (one wide, one closeup) of us and said "now you're going on the internet". I don't know if we really are on the 'net. If they did, they would probably say "hey look at these XBOX fans". It's so gay... Some folks went around and put stickers on ALL XBOX posters saying "This company has performed an illegal operation. If this problem persists, stop using their software". If you look close at the photo (if you ever see three dudes in pirate hats on the 'net, please let me know), you should see on at least one of the hats one such sticker. I can only conclude MS spent far more on advertising than actual development... too bad it still smells. - Paul