I have a motorized equatorial mount that is of very hefty precision design. You would have to pick it up from Santa Fe NM, but its perfect for astrophotography.
-Simon.
A laser disk has pits on the disk that vary in length and position in the sequence. So essentially you have a time and amplitude domain that generates a analog waveform. Why would it not be possible to construct a special apparatus that reads the length of the pits as accurately as possible and store that information in a data file with a 64 bit number for each pit with a time? Once you have this the data you have captured is digital and can use the necessary analysis to generate the image information from that data?
It seems a lot better than dealing with disk players that are taking this information doing various filtering on the information and working with the generated analog frequency waveform.
I think you are slightly misinformed with regard to graphics resolution capabilities of cards available on the general market. For some time 3Dlabs, and Matrox have had the ability to drive the IBM T221 displays which have a native resolution of 3840x2400 still higher than the new 30" cinema display offering from Apple. The connection interface wasn't designed by Apple to support the 30" display. Also if note Apple's offerings have yet to hit the market while the T221's have been available for over a year.
Hey I was just reading wired today and saw the new AI lab that Frank Gehry designed. So cool, and this picture of you and Rod Brooks brought back some memories for me too. In 1992 I was at the ISEF engineering project entitled Computer Controlled Robotic Crane. At one point during my life I ended up at MIT at the AI lab and always had a keen interest in listening to Brook's philosophy on robotics, so analogous to a biological model:)
Its very cool that things like the ISEF are still going strong and that people are still interested in science and willing to pursue it, and it looks like you got to do some pretty cool things too.
The one lament I have is that I've only kept in touch with a few people from the ISEF, though one is my best friend, so I can't complain to much, but there were so many talented people there that its a shame to have not taken in more of the people around me then.
I'm intrigued how many solutions exist to all these counter examples. Why not have the ability to supply power from a external source to the locking system in event of power failure. The input path can be via optical or electric with the usual array of filtering mechanisms and barriers so that the lock circuitry can't be fried by malicious intent. Another thing is that it could have a lock system that is in fact powered like a radiometer by light to enable the throw of the mechanical bolt to be released.
Also I have devised a system where you have little arrays of rare earth magnets that form a field and you insert a card to interrupt that field which disengages a mechanism allowing for a door to be opened with mechanical backup in event of electronic failure.
Seems that many good solutions exist out there, also to the person who posed that finding the Key based on the VIN as plausible would only be so if you could not reprogram the codes for the lock.
Sufficient systems that are for all tense and purposes not able to be combinatorially attacked can be engineered.
Though the old axiom still exists: The more modern a system is the more susceptible it is to primitive attack, such as putting a liquid explosive around the door seams and blowing the door open, or blasting cord, etc.
Central Point Software/Hardware had the Copy II, and Deluxe Copy II PC Option board. The board was installed beween the existing floppy controller and the floppy drive. Using software such as TC, TCM; the transacopy software it did bit for bit copys. It also had a nice feature to be able to make a image on the hard disk of the floppy disk, usually about 4x the size of the disk, but it preserved data that the software deemed important for copy protection.
I use this board many a time to backup up disks from hardware such as Tektronix Graphics work stations, and other machines whos disk format was unknown.
They even let you read those annoying 800k floppy disks from a macintosh.
I had a idea to create a virtual floppy drive that emulated a physical drive to let you work with unique formats, such that you would just upload into the flash or memory on the new box that functioned as a floppy, it would have a little menu on the front so that you can select through different disks that are loaded and they are loaded from image file formats, so that you don't have to have the failure that can happen to floppy disks, etc... (hopefully some one will build one).
Really wish these boards still existed today as they would have preserved almost everything on the floppy that you were archiving to create good image file backups.
many systems use series of coils and other devices to format the voltages and frequencys with in certian ranges. I have noticed that duing some screen redraws I would get audable sounds on a PS-390 Evans & Sutherland graphics display while displaying vector graphics and no weird sounds in text mode. The system used a CRT, and other odd interfaces, but there was no speaker as such, and it would create audable emissions, and they could be viewed on a osciloscope with a microphone attached as input... I would reccomend that you approach this as scientificaly as possible by actually measuring the sounds, recording the sounds nad doing frequency analysis on the sounds. Then you could better asssertain what the problem is.
On my current quick silver G4 there was a speaker hiss problem where you could hear audable noises out of the internal speaker during some operations with menus and graphics. The only solution was the attachment of Apple Pro Speakers to the G4 audio out port, though if you hold the speaker up to your ear you can still hear the noises, so it still has some cross over with the sound system.
You may wat to look at http://www.norsam.com/hdrosetta.htm
and as I understand it IBM was developing a system for accessing digital information that
accessed data stored on silicon wafers.
Granted at high storage densities, you need a electron microscope to read it, but it would archive well past humn life times.
I went by Toys R US and they wanted 100 dollars for the units, Aparently they had been on sale before, and even though they had quite a few units in stock, some with dust on them, they still retailed for 100. Disapointed, as that seemed to be to much money for me to spend to get one:(
Slashdot Mirror
I have a motorized equatorial mount that is of very hefty precision design. You would have to pick it up from Santa Fe NM, but its perfect for astrophotography. -Simon.
A laser disk has pits on the disk that vary in length and position in the sequence. So essentially you have a time and amplitude domain that generates a analog waveform. Why would it not be possible to construct a special apparatus that reads the length of the pits as accurately as possible and store that information in a data file with a 64 bit number for each pit with a time? Once you have this the data you have captured is digital and can use the necessary analysis to generate the image information from that data? It seems a lot better than dealing with disk players that are taking this information doing various filtering on the information and working with the generated analog frequency waveform.
I think you are slightly misinformed with regard to graphics resolution capabilities of cards available on the general market. For some time 3Dlabs, and Matrox have had the ability to drive the IBM T221 displays which have a native resolution of 3840x2400 still higher than the new 30" cinema display offering from Apple. The connection interface wasn't designed by Apple to support the 30" display. Also if note Apple's offerings have yet to hit the market while the T221's have been available for over a year.
Hey I was just reading wired today and saw the new AI lab that Frank Gehry designed. So cool, and this picture of you and Rod Brooks brought back some memories for me too. In 1992 I was at the ISEF engineering project entitled Computer Controlled Robotic Crane. At one point during my life I ended up at MIT at the AI lab and always had a keen interest in listening to Brook's philosophy on robotics, so analogous to a biological model :)
Its very cool that things like the ISEF are still going strong and that people are still interested in science and willing to pursue it, and it looks like you got to do some pretty cool things too.
The one lament I have is that I've only kept in touch with a few people from the ISEF, though one is my best friend, so I can't complain to much, but there were so many talented people there that its a shame to have not taken in more of the people around me then.
I'm intrigued how many solutions exist to all these counter examples. Why not have the ability to supply power from a external source to the locking system in event of power failure. The input path can be via optical or electric with the usual array of filtering mechanisms and barriers so that the lock circuitry can't be fried by malicious intent. Another thing is that it could have a lock system that is in fact powered like a radiometer by light to enable the throw of the mechanical bolt to be released. Also I have devised a system where you have little arrays of rare earth magnets that form a field and you insert a card to interrupt that field which disengages a mechanism allowing for a door to be opened with mechanical backup in event of electronic failure. Seems that many good solutions exist out there, also to the person who posed that finding the Key based on the VIN as plausible would only be so if you could not reprogram the codes for the lock. Sufficient systems that are for all tense and purposes not able to be combinatorially attacked can be engineered. Though the old axiom still exists: The more modern a system is the more susceptible it is to primitive attack, such as putting a liquid explosive around the door seams and blowing the door open, or blasting cord, etc.
Central Point Software/Hardware had the Copy II, and Deluxe Copy II PC Option board. The board was installed beween the existing floppy controller and the floppy drive. Using software such as TC, TCM; the transacopy software it did bit for bit copys. It also had a nice feature to be able to make a image on the hard disk of the floppy disk, usually about 4x the size of the disk, but it preserved data that the software deemed important for copy protection. I use this board many a time to backup up disks from hardware such as Tektronix Graphics work stations, and other machines whos disk format was unknown. They even let you read those annoying 800k floppy disks from a macintosh. I had a idea to create a virtual floppy drive that emulated a physical drive to let you work with unique formats, such that you would just upload into the flash or memory on the new box that functioned as a floppy, it would have a little menu on the front so that you can select through different disks that are loaded and they are loaded from image file formats, so that you don't have to have the failure that can happen to floppy disks, etc... (hopefully some one will build one). Really wish these boards still existed today as they would have preserved almost everything on the floppy that you were archiving to create good image file backups.
many systems use series of coils and other devices to format the voltages and frequencys with in certian ranges. I have noticed that duing some screen redraws I would get audable sounds on a PS-390 Evans & Sutherland graphics display while displaying vector graphics and no weird sounds in text mode. The system used a CRT, and other odd interfaces, but there was no speaker as such, and it would create audable emissions, and they could be viewed on a osciloscope with a microphone attached as input... I would reccomend that you approach this as scientificaly as possible by actually measuring the sounds, recording the sounds nad doing frequency analysis on the sounds. Then you could better asssertain what the problem is. On my current quick silver G4 there was a speaker hiss problem where you could hear audable noises out of the internal speaker during some operations with menus and graphics. The only solution was the attachment of Apple Pro Speakers to the G4 audio out port, though if you hold the speaker up to your ear you can still hear the noises, so it still has some cross over with the sound system.
You may wat to look at http://www.norsam.com/hdrosetta.htm and as I understand it IBM was developing a system for accessing digital information that accessed data stored on silicon wafers. Granted at high storage densities, you need a electron microscope to read it, but it would archive well past humn life times.
I went by Toys R US and they wanted 100 dollars for the units, Aparently they had been on sale before, and even though they had quite a few units in stock, some with dust on them, they still retailed for 100. Disapointed, as that seemed to be to much money for me to spend to get one :(