Is there good reference hardware that you could recommend to use this with?
Also, is the code generated solely for PPC/x86 processors, or can you generate code for Digitial Signal Processors? What is the current limitation on the signal bandwidth that can be processed digitally - processing power, data throughput, or what?
The "Feynmann Lectures on Physics", in three volumes.
They're expensive, but outstanding and well worth it. He developed them for a freshman level course, so they're accesible and don't rely on particularly fancy mathematical notation.
Re:The Casimir effect - unlimited energy?
on
The Casimir Effect
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· Score: 1
Of course, the serious research is hampered by the fact that everyone publishes as "Anonymous Coward".
My father just retired from the medical school faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where they have the original experiments on spontaneous generation.
In these experiments, they sealed jars of some sort of growth medium which was sterilized. By showing that nothing grew in them, they disproved the theory that life was "spontaneously generated", and that it comes from previous life. They still have the sealed jars on display.
Dad always said he was tempted to sneak in at night and stick a mouse inside one of the jars.
You get to name the road if you're the only one on the road when they name it. So big companies, when they build a new building/complex and a new road, get to name the road.
Sometimes even small fries get to name a road, if they're the only residence on it.
Could this technique be used as a way to track evolving spam techniques over time?
You could develop a corpus of spam over a long period of time, and look for shifts in the data. What this paper describes is distinguishing between a spam-corpus and a legit-corpus, but you could also compare a spam-1999 corpus to a spam-2002 corpus, and see if the spammers are up to anything new.
Not that it would be useful, but it might be kind of cool to try it out and see.
Also having worked in the field for a while, here's some numbers:
Regular phone networks encode data at 64 kbps (that's bits per second, not bytes) - 8000 samples/seconds, 8 bits per sample.
Cell phones use more extreme compression, and can transmit at less than 16 kbps. Ever noticed how they sound worse, though?
Any stream has a built in delay - you have to buffer up enough sound in a packet before you send it off. So a 1 ms delay means 1000 packets a seconds, which is inefficient for voice. Buffering in voice calls is usually tens of milliseconds.
Delays of under 100 ms are usually not noticable. Delays of 500 ms will bug the crap out of you.
And, of course, there is the speed of light limitation, (5 milliseconds for 1000 miles - once you route that through a fiber optic cable, it can be a few times that, depending on the dielectric constant of the fiber.).
As someone who uses several different programs that use three dimensional modeling (including finite element simulation and CAD for machining), I would love to see an open, text based file format for describing these things.
Most of the three dimensional editors that I use suck in some way. I don't hold it against them, it's a tricky thing to do. But I'd love to be able to generate my own 3-D files from a script - so that I could generate many variations, for example - which is something most editors don't let you do. An open file format would be a great boon to those of us doing 3-D CAD work, as we could get into writing some of our own tools with a minimum of effort.
There intent is more clearly seen in their increasingly draconian license agreements and continuing campaign of disinformation. And their continued resistance to making any changes in the face of an anti-trust conviction.
A few years back, a friend of mine who was working on real-time Linux was at a trade show, and the Microsoft folks were there, friendly, and certainly interested. They asked a lot of questions, then asked if my friend would like to come work with microsoft.
So good for them, they can show up and not tell lies to people's faces for a few days. This is clearly more of a PR stunt than any kind of change of heart.
So if you're there at linuxworld - Please, Just ignore them!
You know, I thought about arguing about possible clock discrepancy. Then I realized that I travel both ways, and it would be hard to make that argument twice.
I use to have a toll transponder and commute to work.
When I got my bill, It listed the time I went through any given toll. There were two tolls - one to enter the road, and one to exit.
I'm sure glad I was never asked to explain how I made it nine miles in under eight minutes on a 55 MPH road.
It would be very easy to write a short script to characterize press releases.
Grep the number of times "illegal copying" is found (in this case, 3)
Grep the number of times "protect content" is found (in this case, 2)
Grep the number of times "making people pay more for something so that it is deliberatly crippled to prevent them from doing things that they both would want to do and is perfectly legal to do": oops, zero in this case. Funny, I could have sworn it was in there somewhere.
The sad part of this is that if it really was a free market, this would never get off the ground. What consumer would pay for it?
I agree that they this was a decent thing to do. I also agree that, as business villians go, MS is not the worst of the bunch. (Just see "The Insider" for a look at real corporate evil.)
But as the article said, despite Microsoft's restraint, the effect of the DMCA on this research was still chilling. Credit to Microsoft for not going after this, but the net score is still negative . I mean, look at the basic absurdity. This guy was worried about getting in trouble for figuring out a flaw in a game console. It's not as if he was publishing a way to launch nuclear missiles.
I've found over the course of my career that learning more than one computing language is never a bad thing. The difference between the structure and syntax of languages like C and FORTRAN are not that large for practical purposes.
Libraries of existing code, particularly for scientific computing, are a huge incentive to switching. As long as you don't need to create a GUI for the application, or do bit level manipulation, or do extensive string parsing, FORTRAN and the existing libraries will probably suite you well.
And the more languages you learn, the better programmer you will be in all of these languages. You will also start to view languages as tools - selecting the proper one for the job at hand - rather than trying to do everything in one language.
I have written code for a variety of applications. And I've developed a repetoire of languages (Python, C/C++, FORTRAN) that covers most of the bases of what I need to do. But programming is easier if you don't think of yourself as a "FORTRAN Programmer", but rather as someone who looks at a problem and says "I can program a solution to that. It would make the most sense to program it in X.
It seems to me part of the problem is distinguishing intentional from unintentional motions.
If she has enough control to bend her fingers, you could attach a magnet and a small reed switch to parts of her body she can bring close together and move apart again. You can get these fairly small.
Next, you have to run the switch out to a breadboard. With a couple of monostable timers, you could rig something up that would generate an output signal after some defined sequence (switch open, switch closed for 2 seconds or less, switch open for two seconds or less, switch closed) which should cut down on false alarms. The output signal could be hooked up to some sort of piezo buzzer.
This being slashdot, I would have to suggest hooking it up to a demo microcontroller board rather than using monostable timers.
In any event, don't forget about www.digikey.com, for all the cheap parts you need that they don't stock at the strip mall.
It is one month before Rosh Hashanah, when I, as a jew, will pray for the redemption of the entire world. Even poor scarred and blighted souls such as yours.
Many people have complained here that they've written to several or dozens of congresspeople. In our system, a congressman (in the house) represents the people of her district. While she is supposed to be concerned with the good of the country as a whole, her actual job is to represent HER DISTRICT.
So write to YOUR congressman or senators. Only three people in congress represent you, not all of them. And be sure to let them know you live in their district or state.
(Which is why this sort of thing particularly pisses me off - I live in DC, so I have only one person representing me, and she doesn't even get a vote!)
I think this is a fine idea. I can see many a pleasant evening writing scripts to extract all sorts of correlations. I'd love to see this on the web, and downloadable in one big chunk.
The xbox hardware, as people point out, is a loss leader. What does Microsoft gain by selling it?
They gain a platform over which they finally have full control over the software. If they made computers like Apple, Linux would never have gotten anywhere - too much of the system would have been closed. But by working on the open PC architecture, they were unable to ever fully clamp down control over all software through technology. This made them clamp down through anti-competitive practices, such as forcing OEM's to pay for a windows license for each CPU shipped, etc.
The xbox finally gives them full control over the software. You can't even compile and distribute your own code without their permission because of their EULA for the SDK.
That's why this is so great - you take them up on the loss leader, but they don't get the absolute software control they were hoping for.
Remember Microsoft's "opening" of the SMB protocol? The license agreement stated it could not be incorporated with any code that used the GPL or similar license.
So they can very well open up the source code, but not allow it to be used in any GPL'd system.
There was once a twilight zone (or maybe outer limits episode) where a couple was presented with a box with a button. If they press the button, they got a bunch of money, but someone they didn't know would die. They agonized over whether to do it, and finally press the button.
The man comes back to take the box away. The couple asks what he's going to do with it.
He responds: "We give it to someone else. Someone... you don't know"
Slashdot Mirror
Are you worried about illegal uses, such as using this to make a GPS spoofer transmitter?
Also, is the code generated solely for PPC/x86 processors, or can you generate code for Digitial Signal Processors? What is the current limitation on the signal bandwidth that can be processed digitally - processing power, data throughput, or what?
They're expensive, but outstanding and well worth it. He developed them for a freshman level course, so they're accesible and don't rely on particularly fancy mathematical notation.
In these experiments, they sealed jars of some sort of growth medium which was sterilized. By showing that nothing grew in them, they disproved the theory that life was "spontaneously generated", and that it comes from previous life. They still have the sealed jars on display.
Dad always said he was tempted to sneak in at night and stick a mouse inside one of the jars.
Give me the special contact lenses. 007, move over!
Sometimes even small fries get to name a road, if they're the only residence on it.
(Yes, I know I'm offtopic...)
Actually, it's irritating after far less than 10 seconds.
You could develop a corpus of spam over a long period of time, and look for shifts in the data. What this paper describes is distinguishing between a spam-corpus and a legit-corpus, but you could also compare a spam-1999 corpus to a spam-2002 corpus, and see if the spammers are up to anything new.
Not that it would be useful, but it might be kind of cool to try it out and see.
I always measured voice delay from the microphone at the input to the speaker at the output. Your definition is also reasonable.
But if I'm using one of these things, it's the end to end delay that matters to me.
Regular phone networks encode data at 64 kbps (that's bits per second, not bytes) - 8000 samples/seconds, 8 bits per sample.
Cell phones use more extreme compression, and can transmit at less than 16 kbps. Ever noticed how they sound worse, though?
Any stream has a built in delay - you have to buffer up enough sound in a packet before you send it off. So a 1 ms delay means 1000 packets a seconds, which is inefficient for voice. Buffering in voice calls is usually tens of milliseconds.
Delays of under 100 ms are usually not noticable. Delays of 500 ms will bug the crap out of you.
And, of course, there is the speed of light limitation, (5 milliseconds for 1000 miles - once you route that through a fiber optic cable, it can be a few times that, depending on the dielectric constant of the fiber.).
Most of the three dimensional editors that I use suck in some way. I don't hold it against them, it's a tricky thing to do. But I'd love to be able to generate my own 3-D files from a script - so that I could generate many variations, for example - which is something most editors don't let you do. An open file format would be a great boon to those of us doing 3-D CAD work, as we could get into writing some of our own tools with a minimum of effort.
There intent is more clearly seen in their increasingly draconian license agreements and continuing campaign of disinformation. And their continued resistance to making any changes in the face of an anti-trust conviction. A few years back, a friend of mine who was working on real-time Linux was at a trade show, and the Microsoft folks were there, friendly, and certainly interested. They asked a lot of questions, then asked if my friend would like to come work with microsoft. So good for them, they can show up and not tell lies to people's faces for a few days. This is clearly more of a PR stunt than any kind of change of heart. So if you're there at linuxworld - Please, Just ignore them!
You know, I thought about arguing about possible clock discrepancy. Then I realized that I travel both ways, and it would be hard to make that argument twice.
I'm sure glad I was never asked to explain how I made it nine miles in under eight minutes on a 55 MPH road.
Grep the number of times "illegal copying" is found (in this case, 3)
Grep the number of times "protect content" is found (in this case, 2)
Grep the number of times "making people pay more for something so that it is deliberatly crippled to prevent them from doing things that they both would want to do and is perfectly legal to do": oops, zero in this case. Funny, I could have sworn it was in there somewhere.
The sad part of this is that if it really was a free market, this would never get off the ground. What consumer would pay for it?
But as the article said, despite Microsoft's restraint, the effect of the DMCA on this research was still chilling. Credit to Microsoft for not going after this, but the net score is still negative . I mean, look at the basic absurdity. This guy was worried about getting in trouble for figuring out a flaw in a game console. It's not as if he was publishing a way to launch nuclear missiles.
Libraries of existing code, particularly for scientific computing, are a huge incentive to switching. As long as you don't need to create a GUI for the application, or do bit level manipulation, or do extensive string parsing, FORTRAN and the existing libraries will probably suite you well.
And the more languages you learn, the better programmer you will be in all of these languages. You will also start to view languages as tools - selecting the proper one for the job at hand - rather than trying to do everything in one language.
I have written code for a variety of applications. And I've developed a repetoire of languages (Python, C/C++, FORTRAN) that covers most of the bases of what I need to do. But programming is easier if you don't think of yourself as a "FORTRAN Programmer", but rather as someone who looks at a problem and says "I can program a solution to that. It would make the most sense to program it in X.
If she has enough control to bend her fingers, you could attach a magnet and a small reed switch to parts of her body she can bring close together and move apart again. You can get these fairly small.
Next, you have to run the switch out to a breadboard. With a couple of monostable timers, you could rig something up that would generate an output signal after some defined sequence (switch open, switch closed for 2 seconds or less, switch open for two seconds or less, switch closed) which should cut down on false alarms. The output signal could be hooked up to some sort of piezo buzzer.
This being slashdot, I would have to suggest hooking it up to a demo microcontroller board rather than using monostable timers.
In any event, don't forget about www.digikey.com, for all the cheap parts you need that they don't stock at the strip mall.
So write to YOUR congressman or senators. Only three people in congress represent you, not all of them. And be sure to let them know you live in their district or state.
(Which is why this sort of thing particularly pisses me off - I live in DC, so I have only one person representing me, and she doesn't even get a vote!)
I think this is a fine idea. I can see many a pleasant evening writing scripts to extract all sorts of correlations. I'd love to see this on the web, and downloadable in one big chunk.
They gain a platform over which they finally have full control over the software. If they made computers like Apple, Linux would never have gotten anywhere - too much of the system would have been closed. But by working on the open PC architecture, they were unable to ever fully clamp down control over all software through technology. This made them clamp down through anti-competitive practices, such as forcing OEM's to pay for a windows license for each CPU shipped, etc.
The xbox finally gives them full control over the software. You can't even compile and distribute your own code without their permission because of their EULA for the SDK.
That's why this is so great - you take them up on the loss leader, but they don't get the absolute software control they were hoping for.
Remember Microsoft's "opening" of the SMB protocol? The license agreement stated it could not be incorporated with any code that used the GPL or similar license.
So they can very well open up the source code, but not allow it to be used in any GPL'd system.
The man comes back to take the box away. The couple asks what he's going to do with it.
He responds: "We give it to someone else. Someone... you don't know"