So, how long until drug runners send little planes from Columbia to Florida?
I remember, back when cruise missiles were first being developed, thinking how a strategic cruise missile (the one with the half-ton payload and restartable turbojet engine) would make a dandy drug smuggling vehicle. Load with a thousand pounds of cocaine, fly it below radar across the Gulf of Mexico and into the door of a large barn in some remote region of the US.
The big problem would be if SAC happened to see it coming. It would look JUST like a strategic cruise misslle coming at the US over the Gulf of Mexico. B-)
They might have gotten away with it back then. But these days the US keeps an AWACS over the Gulf all the time - to look for drug smugglers. Two can play at plowsharing.
No, that exploding sound you hear is thousands of wine fanatics reading the article and going, "Wine is NOT AN EMULATOR!!
I thought the joke embedded in the acronym was that it stood for BOTH of:
- WINdows Emulator.
- Wine Is Not an Emulator.
Because it DOES provide a Windows API (which is one of the definitions of "emulator") but DOESN'T software emulate the machine itself (which is part of the USUAL definition of "emulator"), instead running the application's executable code "directly on the metal" - avoiding the massive speed penalty - and doing as much as practical of the API emulation by leveraging Linux native services rather than replacing them.
But I don't actually KNOW how much of that is true. If one of the WINE core group can confirm or correct this post I'd appreciate it.
I note that the Frottle master relays traffic when two non-master nodes wish to talk to each other - even if they could talk directly. This both reduces the potential agregate peer-to-peer bandwidth by a factor of two (or more) and sets up the Frottle master as a "man-in-the-middle".
I'd rather see the master simply arbitrating bandwidth in its neighborhood and the peers exchanging data directly. General-casing that to multiple simultaneous masters, while relaying but only when necessary and only by efficient paths, limits out at a mesh network with extreme bandwidth usage efficiency.
But the thing that bugs me is the security implications of having all non-master nodes relay through the master. That lets a hostile node that achieves (or spoofs-up) master-node status perform man-in-the-middle attacks on the security of the communication.
Being man-in-the-middle is probably not a big deal if the master is also the main internet gateway (so it would be man-in-the-middle to most traffic anyhow), operated by a well-known and trusted organization. And it does simplify routing packets from one channel to another. But it bothers me anyhow.
Fortunately, any node that can also hear its peer can check the honesty of the master's forwarding.
Which leads to a potential way to eliminate unnecessary bounces off the master: Clients can inform it that they can hear other particular clients and what the differential delay characteristics are from their site. Then the master can just assign the transmission slot for the packet and drop it on the floor while the receiving peer captures it directly.
Yeah, but you can delete pictures, Stan! I was thinking the exact same thing- $10 for a 2 megapixel digital camera, even without an LCD that's a damn bargain!
As I read it, you can delete the pix in the camera and re-shoot, but you can't view it.
The viewing software is for the CD you get when you bring the camera back - at which point they dump the RAM onto the CD, give you the CD and prints, and keep the camera.
My guess on what keeps you from keeping the camera forever:
1) You can't get the pix out without cracking the camera software, which no doubt includes some serious access control as well as undocumented and perhaps non-standard interfaces, connectors, and protocols. (And they might hit you for DMCA violation by a number of routes, including claiming copyright to the pix themselves until you return the camera.)
2) Eventually the batteris will run down if the camera is not returned for recharging.
Still: I bet there will be a crack within a few months - after which it may go the way of the cue cat. (Depends on whether the loss rate from crackers keeping 'em is higher than their budgeted loss rate - which MIGHT not happen even if they ARE cracked.)
Hydrogen entering an array of titania nanotubes flows around all the surfaces, but it also splits into individually charged atoms and permeates the surface of the nanotubes. These hydrogen ions provide electrons for conductivity. The change in conductance signals that hydrogen, above the background level, is present.
Sounds very similiar to how a fuel-cell works, but instead of pumping through lots of hydrogen to produce as much electricity as possible they're just using a little bit of hydrogen to generate a tiny current (or does it just change the conductivity?).
Unless I'm mistaken they just SAID that it was the conductivity change that was measured.
But this material ought to make a GREAT electrode for the reducing-agent end of a fuel cell.
In particular, it might be handy for selectively extracting the hydrogen from the impure output of a reformer - or even extract it from hydrocarbons directly, eleiminating the need for a reformer and directly burning the hydrogen from hydrocarbons.
I'll volunteer space in my yard. It can be rented for free electricity. Put up one wind-generation tower. It's not noisy, and though the blades do produce noise, though not quite as has been.... sugguested... that sort of low frequency noise, being created by a very low power source, would barely travel a meter before giving out most of it's energy.
Sorry, wrong.
Low frequency sound carries long distances. It's high-frequency that self-attenuates. (Think of distant thunder versus the all-frequency crack of nearby lightning.)
And there's a LOT of energy in that low-frequency sound. An appreciable percentage of the energy that was extracted from the wind and converted to rotational energy by the blades.
I'll rate these concerns as (-1, uninformed) because I really don't think UGL is trying to troll. He might just work in oil. : )
Sorry, never touched the stuff. (Closes I came was a stint programming for the auto industry, twenty years ago. Engine control, emissions control measurement, energy management (saved over a megabuck per year at one plant during the energy crisis), airbag testing.)
As to "uninformed" - sorry, but these issues are quite personal - because I'm going to be putting up a wind generator and solar on my OWN place shortly and am having a bit of trouble picking a quiet one. B-) (Fortunately there's a place up near Cloverdale that has a demo yard - if I can hit it on a windy day.)
What's clean and unobtrusive about natural energy sources? Would you rather have an oil or coal plant just upwind of you?
Been there, did that. Not too bad, even in those days before major emission control add-ons. But not my preferred neighbor either.
Don't forget natural gas. Expensive but MUCH cleaner.
My point was just that, when you're comparing energy sources, there are environmental costs to "renewable", too, and they're often even worse than those of non-renewable sources. Let's not ignore them just because "renewable" is politically correct, fossil and nuclear are not, and space-solar is off the radar screen.
I live a couple miles away from a big windfarm. There's no detectable noise, and the turbines turn very slowly-- maybe once every couple of seconds. It's actually quite relaxing to just sit and watch them spin.
Try standing directly downwind of one. An N-bladed mill throws a big pressure differencial as each blade comes by, resulting in a big N*rpm cycles-per-minute subsonic "noise". It can shake apart a house, and at certain frequencies has very nasty effects on your nervous system and/or musculature. (NASA abandoned their work on 'em because of that.)
Smaller personal-size windmills are often quite noisy, too, especially under high wind conditions. Not nice to your neighbors - or yourself. Noise level is a major selection criterion.
Note also that the manuals all warn you NEVER to mount one on your house, because of the much higher levels of mechanical noise conducted down the mast. And always to get an odd-number-of-blades (i.e. 3) mill to prevent a nasty vibration effect.
As for birds, I admit that I'm no ornithologist, and I haven't done a population survey. But I've never seen a bird get hit by a turbine, even when they're flying around in big flocks. They don't even go near the things, unless they're cruising around near ground level to look for food.
Which raptors do all the time.
The damage to bird populations has been a news item intermittently - though I haven't seen any numbers on whether it's a minor or major problem. But it's apparently a big enough problem that new mills are having their characteristics tweaked to be more visible to birds rather than optimized for efficiency.
Meanwhile, filling the low spot in the coastal range on the flyway with a few thousand mills is just ideal for chopping up non-trivial numbers of migrating birds. B-(
There have been a few turbine failures since the windfarm was built, but never a grass fire. The one failure I witnessed looked pretty spectacular, with a bright flash like a shorted transformer, but no parts fell off. I have never seen nor heard of molten metal flying out of the things. (Perhaps you're confusing the term "windmill" with "iron foundry.")
Check out the fires in the Altamont Pass area of California.
Gimme Wind, Gimme Solar, hell, I'll even take Geothermal, just make it clean, unobtrusive, and if you'd like, I can sell you some good land in my back yard.
What's "clean" and "unobtrusive" about renewable energy?
Wind: Those big windmills are noisy. You do NOT want to live near one. They chop up raptors and migrating birds wholesale, because the birds aren't able to recognize the need to dodge the blade coming at them at a significant fraction of the speed of sound. When they have a mechanical failure they often drop molten metal on the ground, starting a grass fire. (Windy areas tend to be VERY fire-prone and a wind farm has a LOT of mills, so it doesn't take a very high incidence of failure to create a high incidence of fires.)
Solar: BIG drop in albedo - grab maybe 15% of the incoming solar energy but absorb nearly ALL of it, in an area that USED to reflect well over half. LOTS of warming. And don't forget to count the energy and pollution costs of making the equipment.
Geothermal: Minimal amount available. Major drilling. Turning resort areas into plumbing farms. (Look at "the geysers" area in California - once a major resort, now a tiny power station with big pipes where the geysers used to be.) Pollution from releasing toxic minerals. Possible effects on earthquakes - including a potential for a major increase as a result of deep-well water injection.
Hydroelectric: We all know about the environmental impact of dams - both on fish and whatever lived in those nice valleys that got flooded.
The only minimally-polluting "renewable" energy source I know of would be space-solar. (And even there I'd wear my tinfoil hat and jumpsuit whenever I was within a few miles of the rectenna site. B-) )
In this case 2x density, as the lower one has twice as many dots in the same area as the dashes of the upper.
I don't think that's quite right.
Unless I missed a transition from longitudinal to transverse recording, the old scheme produced a track like this (viewed either from the top or side:)
The vertical scheme lays the magnets INTO the medium rather than ALONG the track. Viewed from the side:
NSNNS
|||||
SNSSN
10110
Or, viewed from the top:
NSNNS
The problem with longitudinal recording is that, as you make the bits shorter, the magnetic fields of adjacent opposite-sense bits become more effective at trying to flip the singleton to go along with them. (Magnetic domains are more self-reenforcing, and thus stable, when they're long and thin, subject to flipping from thermal agitation at progressively lower temperatures as they become more short and fat.)
Make the bit too short and the neighbors "squeeze it out":
N--SSNN--S -> N--------S
1.1.0.1.1. -> 1.1.1.1.1.
But with vertical recording the adjacent, opposite-sense neighbors tend to STABILIZE the bit, and the smaller it gets, the more stable it gets. (And you're guaranteed a limit on the number of long runs of same-sense by the coding scheme, which has to flip now and then to keep the read electronics in sync.)
So you can shrink it WAY down - both along the track and across it - to the limit of the head technology to produce the original magnitizing field or the inherent domain size of the magnetic medium.
You can get FAR more than a factor of two in EACH direction - and multiply the two improvements to get the increase in bits per unit area.
(They've been talking about this for years. How come it's just hitting the field now? Did they go to transverse magnetization in the meantime? That would have similar advantages of smaller-is-more-stable. But the track would be far wider than with vertical, as would the gap, so you'd still save a bunch in one of the dimensions by standing the magnets on their head and packing them in tightly, like a bundle of sticks, rather than laying them on their sides.)
I fear that the RIAA will start to pressure the donors of these schools (where many $$'s for research and support come from).
Donors to schools like MIT are proabably techies.
Even if they aren't already riding a privacy hobbyhorse, they're likely to already have a bee in their bonnet about how the RIAA's pressure against any new technology that CAN BE USED to "pirate" music is crippling the industry.
- DAT tapes were crippled and virtually killed.
- Taxes on computer media.
- Attacks on authors of P2P software applications.
- "DRM" software and hardware that cripples computers and makes them more expensive and untweakable.
and the list goes on.
IMHO pressure on contributors to MIT from RIAA is likely to result in a flood of new money for MIT. B-)
Imagine the turmoil to a school administrator, knowing their students' life savings are about to get sucked up by the RIAA for sharing a few songs.
Even moreso: Imagine the turmoil of a school administrator, knowing their students' life savings are about to get sucked up by the RIAA because they wrote a useful tool for informtion cataloging that JUST HAPPENED to catalog some copyrighted files that some OTHER students were sharing.
Or a school administrator who realizes that the next target is probably the administrator, for allowing the school's net to be operated in such a way that students (those perpetual finders-of-ways-around-barriers) could use it to share copyrighted files.
Instead the HTML One-Way links, dead links, leeches, and no accountability system started. And it started ONLY because Xanadu was closed, secret system then (80's-early 90's), and HTTP/HTML was Public, known system.
AND because the people with the management's ear "rabidly prototyped" rather than designing and staying focussed on getting a product out, and pushed aside those in the project who asked them hard questions.
So they pushed the problems around from module to module rather than solving them. And they gave a presentation to the backers about "throway code" and how you only keep about 5-10% of the code in each pass through the loop. And this inability to undestand that a product is supposed to come out after a couple passes ("Q", not "O") ticked off their backers, who eventually backed out and left them back in the garage.
Xanadu had some good solutions - which is good, because they were trying to solve ALL the problems at once. But its "architects" never picked one and settled on it, so the rest of the crew could actually work on it (and not see their work discarded before it could even be finished).
Unless you can figure out how OSS WiFi drivers are piracy I think this is legal.
That's easy: They will claim it's piracy of THE DRIVERS - that the reverse-engineering process includes copying some non-trivial part of their code and putting the result into public use and from their into their competition's products.
"Oh yea? Show us the copied part?" "We'll do that in court. By the way, it's discovery time. Put down your software tools and come spend some time under oath helping us construct our case against you."
It's bogus, of course. But if Microsoft is pressuring them (as evidenced by their abandonment of Linux support) they might play cat's paw for them some more.
The DMCA only covers reverse engineering as it pertains to copyright circumvention. [...] there is a specific clause [] that allows for reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability.
Which won't stop them from suing - any more than the same clause stopped the RIAA from going after DeCSS (and winning!)
There's a huge flaw in your analogy, because there's only one real use for cocaine: getting high. (Well, okay, two uses, because you can also sell cocaine to someone else, but that's beside the point.)
There's a flaw in your analogy, too. Cocaine is also used in eye surgery, and is the medically best choice of a range of drugs for several other treatments.
The signal gets weaker as it passes through walls. Therefore, the signal strength can not be easilly be correlated to a distance [...]
Perhaps a better way would be to use "ping" to check the travel times, rather than the signal strength, compensating for any delays imposed by TCP/IP-stacks and hardware etc. Is this even possible?
It's possible. But IMHO indoors the variability of the response time of the processor to the message will probably introduce far too much jitter for the result to be useful. Finding the right neighborhood, or even the right house, yes. Finding the right desk, no.
But I understand that some of the underlying net-discovery and scheduling protocols (where the cards are talking directly to each other and picking times to transmit) give you a much better measurement of transit time, which may be good enough for the purpose.
Perhaps someone with more intimate knowlege can fill us in.
= = = = =
Given a good measure of transit time, two base stations can construct a hyperboloid on which the mobile is located. (With uncertainty it's actually the space between two hyperboloids.) Add a third and you intersect two hyperboloids, giving you a curved line. Add a fourth and you've got it located to a single point (or two points if all four bases are in the same plane).
It's basically GPS or LORAN run backward (with an extra base station relative to LORAN to give you altitude, since you don't know you're "on the ocean's surface").
It's easy to find cases where people get light sentences for crimes that, at least to me, seem much more damaging to society than a few swapped files. How do you justify asking for billions of dollars of so-called damages or years of jail time when people who shoplift some CDs receive little if any punishment?
Copyright violations have always had draconian punishments. That's partly because the chance of catching an infringer is low - so the penalty must have a high multiplier to make infringement a losing proposition.
"(Only) An eye for an eye" makes crime a paying business. Rob 10 people of $100. Get caught once and have to give THAT $100 back. Result (ignoring other costs): $1,000 gross income, $100 cost of doing business, $900 profit. But get socked for $3,000 for the time you get caught and it becomes $2,000 loss.
Now look at how many people copy that $19.98 CD for each one caught...
What is the department's current understanding of the boundary between "Fair Use" and infringment?
For software:
- Reverse engineering: For interface / file format compatability? For workalike replacement? How much can proprietary code be examined? What must be done to stay legal (or at least beyond the interest of the Departmen) and PROVE it?
- Code copying: How much before infringement begins? Is there a clear definition of the boundary if it isn't lines of code?
For music/movies/other entertainment programming:
- Time-shifting: Is it "Fair Use" to capture broadcast programming for listening/viewing at some other time?
- Space shifting? Is it "Fair Use" to make a copy to use in your car, workspace computer, etc.?
- Backup? Is it OK to make a backup copy - provided if you sell the copy or original the other is also transferred or destroyed?
- Sampling for inclusion of snippets in other works? If so, how much is "Fair Use" before "Infringement" begins.
In either software or entertainment programming: Does the department interpret the DMCA or other anti-"piracy" laws as trumping "Fair Use" rights, such that activity that would be legal under copyright "Fair Use" alone is illegal under anti-piracy laws?
In particular: Does the department believe that defeating copy-protection is a crime even if it is only used for activities that would be "Fair Use" if copy-protection were NOT defeated?
I recognize that this is both a matter of policy and court rulings, and that both are subject to change in the future. I also realize that the opinions of the department and the courts may differ - what I'm after is the department's current interpretation of what MAY be illegal and IS likely to result in prosecution by the department.
I have wanted a tightening of a certain portion of the spec since ANSI's deliberations on the first standard. (Actually, I think I corresponded with Bjarne about it even before then.) I'll paraphrase it here (rather than spending time to put it into correct standard-ese).
1) Beginning with the execution of the first user-written statement of a constructor of the most-baseward class where a virtual function is defined, and ending immediately after the execution of the last user-written statement of that class' destructor, it shall be explicitly legal to call the virtual member function via a "this" pointer (or a copy of its value in an appropriate pointer type).
(This may be done even from code which has no special relationship to the object, other than knowlege of the value of a pointer to the instance and enough of the class' declaration to use it to call the virtual function.)
2) When a virtual function of a base class is overridden by a new definition in a derived class, such a call will execute:
a) The base-class version if performed before the exectuion of the first user-written statement of a constructor of the derived class.
b) The derived-class version if performed during or after the execution of the first user-written statement of the constructor of the derived class and before or during the execution of the last user-written statement of the destructor of the derived class.
c) The base-class version if performed after the execution of the last user-written statement of the desctructor of the derived class.
In particular: If such a call is made during the construction or destruction of member variables or objects of the derived class, the base-class version of the virtual function (if such is defined) is the one executed.
= = = = = = =
In a vpointer implementation this would correspond to the storing of the derived class vpointer as the last action before executing the body of the constructor, and storing the base class vpointer as the first action after executing the body of the destructor.
= = = = = = =
This is not a frivolous, nit-pick.
Making this change enables such functionality as base classes registering their instances during construction, with the behavior of the instances being appropriately promoted as they are built up, even if the behavior happens to be invoked during construction or destruction.
For example: Mark-and-sweep garbage collection of C++ objects can be built using a base class for garbage-collectable objects containing a virtual member function to encode knowlege of the derived object's pointers to perform the marking phase. But without the guarantees of this proposal, constructors and destructors of member objects (and even the containing class itself) become VERY limited in the complexity of behavior they can exhibit, since they must not allocate memory in a way that might preciptiate a garbage-collector activation.
Even absent this (and other) concrete example(s), the proposal would tend to make classes more flexible and less error-prone, because virtual functions become available during construction yet the derived class versions can't be invoked unless the derived class members (and the class itself) are initialized but not finalized. (With this guarantee the only issue of invoking a member of a partially-constructed class is within the class' own constructor and destructor, where it can be handled by programmer care. Without it the member objects may invoke derived class behavior on an uninitialized level of the object, or fail to perform necessary actions appropriate to the current level).
The proposal is upwardly-compatable because it simply tightens requirements on a subset of already allowed behavior. (The first ANSI C++ standard explicitly gave no guarantee of which overriding of virtual member functions would be invoked by a member object constructor or destructor of functions it called, while the revised standard didn't guarantee that EITHER would be invoked - essentially saying "Don't call them from there. Anything might happen.")
Well one tape = 166709 units * 64 (k) / 1024 / 1024 = ~10.175GB
About one second on an OC-192 fiber.
That figure is per tape, the actual shipment has 1,139 tapes, I think. 10.175GB * 1,139 = ~11.6TB. That *is* impressive bandwith.
Call it 20 minutes. Or 1:20 on a measly OC-48.
Sorry, but now that I'm working with fibers I'm just no longer impressed by the bandwidth of a busload, planeload, or even a cruise-missile load of backup tapes. Even an ICBM-load is barely in the running.
That's progress for you. Time to switch to CDs or DVDs if you want to keep the move-the-medium approach ahead of the communication infrastructure. Even that may not last.
Now what WILL impress me is being able to afford to have a SONET ring bundle running through (and terminating in a router at) my house.
(Although my previous house WAS adjacent to just about the only street in the bay area where BOTH of Pac Bell's rings ran down the same set of manholes. So I came within maybe 50 feet. B-) )
I understand that there's already a dating service (in Japan?) that is somewhat similar:
- The subscribers fill out typical dating-service questionaires, and supply their cellphone numbers.
- The service tracks their cellphone locations.
- When two people with a sufficiently high compatability score are within a short distance of each other, BOTH their cellphones ring.
We require licenses to do all kinds of things, why not at least require a literacy standard for voting?
Because voting is a right, not a privilege.
"Literacy tests" have historically been used to swing elections by disenfranchising certain groups opposed to those in power.
The classic example - and the one that resulted in such tests being kicked out by the courts - was their use to keep freed blacks (and poor whites) from voting in the south after the Civil War / War Between the States. (The tests, and their administration were, of course, bogus. Like requiring the voter to read a headline - and giving the black/poor-white voters a Chinese newspaper.)
While we're at it, are you ready for a "Public Affairs Test" before you can write about politics? A "Comparitive Religion" test before you can go to a church of your choice? Or similar bogus tests before you can buy a gun, travel, own property, send a letter, address a crowd, defend yourself in court, and so on?
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So, how long until drug runners send little planes from Columbia to Florida?
I remember, back when cruise missiles were first being developed, thinking how a strategic cruise missile (the one with the half-ton payload and restartable turbojet engine) would make a dandy drug smuggling vehicle. Load with a thousand pounds of cocaine, fly it below radar across the Gulf of Mexico and into the door of a large barn in some remote region of the US.
The big problem would be if SAC happened to see it coming. It would look JUST like a strategic cruise misslle coming at the US over the Gulf of Mexico. B-)
They might have gotten away with it back then. But these days the US keeps an AWACS over the Gulf all the time - to look for drug smugglers. Two can play at plowsharing.
No, that exploding sound you hear is thousands of wine fanatics reading the article and going, "Wine is NOT AN EMULATOR!!
I thought the joke embedded in the acronym was that it stood for BOTH of:
- WINdows Emulator.
- Wine Is Not an Emulator.
Because it DOES provide a Windows API (which is one of the definitions of "emulator") but DOESN'T software emulate the machine itself (which is part of the USUAL definition of "emulator"), instead running the application's executable code "directly on the metal" - avoiding the massive speed penalty - and doing as much as practical of the API emulation by leveraging Linux native services rather than replacing them.
But I don't actually KNOW how much of that is true. If one of the WINE core group can confirm or correct this post I'd appreciate it.
I note that the Frottle master relays traffic when two non-master nodes wish to talk to each other - even if they could talk directly. This both reduces the potential agregate peer-to-peer bandwidth by a factor of two (or more) and sets up the Frottle master as a "man-in-the-middle".
I'd rather see the master simply arbitrating bandwidth in its neighborhood and the peers exchanging data directly. General-casing that to multiple simultaneous masters, while relaying but only when necessary and only by efficient paths, limits out at a mesh network with extreme bandwidth usage efficiency.
But the thing that bugs me is the security implications of having all non-master nodes relay through the master. That lets a hostile node that achieves (or spoofs-up) master-node status perform man-in-the-middle attacks on the security of the communication.
Being man-in-the-middle is probably not a big deal if the master is also the main internet gateway (so it would be man-in-the-middle to most traffic anyhow), operated by a well-known and trusted organization. And it does simplify routing packets from one channel to another. But it bothers me anyhow.
Fortunately, any node that can also hear its peer can check the honesty of the master's forwarding.
Which leads to a potential way to eliminate unnecessary bounces off the master: Clients can inform it that they can hear other particular clients and what the differential delay characteristics are from their site. Then the master can just assign the transmission slot for the packet and drop it on the floor while the receiving peer captures it directly.
Yeah, but you can delete pictures, Stan! I was thinking the exact same thing- $10 for a 2 megapixel digital camera, even without an LCD that's a damn bargain!
As I read it, you can delete the pix in the camera and re-shoot, but you can't view it.
The viewing software is for the CD you get when you bring the camera back - at which point they dump the RAM onto the CD, give you the CD and prints, and keep the camera.
My guess on what keeps you from keeping the camera forever:
1) You can't get the pix out without cracking the camera software, which no doubt includes some serious access control as well as undocumented and perhaps non-standard interfaces, connectors, and protocols. (And they might hit you for DMCA violation by a number of routes, including claiming copyright to the pix themselves until you return the camera.)
2) Eventually the batteris will run down if the camera is not returned for recharging.
Still: I bet there will be a crack within a few months - after which it may go the way of the cue cat. (Depends on whether the loss rate from crackers keeping 'em is higher than their budgeted loss rate - which MIGHT not happen even if they ARE cracked.)
Hydrogen entering an array of titania nanotubes flows around all the surfaces, but it also splits into individually charged atoms and permeates the surface of the nanotubes. These hydrogen ions provide electrons for conductivity. The change in conductance signals that hydrogen, above the background level, is present.
Sounds very similiar to how a fuel-cell works, but instead of pumping through lots of hydrogen to produce as much electricity as possible they're just using a little bit of hydrogen to generate a tiny current (or does it just change the conductivity?).
Unless I'm mistaken they just SAID that it was the conductivity change that was measured.
But this material ought to make a GREAT electrode for the reducing-agent end of a fuel cell.
In particular, it might be handy for selectively extracting the hydrogen from the impure output of a reformer - or even extract it from hydrocarbons directly, eleiminating the need for a reformer and directly burning the hydrogen from hydrocarbons.
I'll volunteer space in my yard. It can be rented for free electricity. Put up one wind-generation tower. It's not noisy, and though the blades do produce noise, though not quite as has been.... sugguested... that sort of low frequency noise, being created by a very low power source, would barely travel a meter before giving out most of it's energy.
Sorry, wrong.
Low frequency sound carries long distances. It's high-frequency that self-attenuates. (Think of distant thunder versus the all-frequency crack of nearby lightning.)
And there's a LOT of energy in that low-frequency sound. An appreciable percentage of the energy that was extracted from the wind and converted to rotational energy by the blades.
I'll rate these concerns as (-1, uninformed) because I really don't think UGL is trying to troll. He might just work in oil. : )
Sorry, never touched the stuff. (Closes I came was a stint programming for the auto industry, twenty years ago. Engine control, emissions control measurement, energy management (saved over a megabuck per year at one plant during the energy crisis), airbag testing.)
As to "uninformed" - sorry, but these issues are quite personal - because I'm going to be putting up a wind generator and solar on my OWN place shortly and am having a bit of trouble picking a quiet one. B-) (Fortunately there's a place up near Cloverdale that has a demo yard - if I can hit it on a windy day.)
What's clean and unobtrusive about natural energy sources? Would you rather have an oil or coal plant just upwind of you?
Been there, did that. Not too bad, even in those days before major emission control add-ons. But not my preferred neighbor either.
Don't forget natural gas. Expensive but MUCH cleaner.
My point was just that, when you're comparing energy sources, there are environmental costs to "renewable", too, and they're often even worse than those of non-renewable sources. Let's not ignore them just because "renewable" is politically correct, fossil and nuclear are not, and space-solar is off the radar screen.
I live a couple miles away from a big windfarm. There's no detectable noise, and the turbines turn very slowly-- maybe once every couple of seconds. It's actually quite relaxing to just sit and watch them spin.
Try standing directly downwind of one. An N-bladed mill throws a big pressure differencial as each blade comes by, resulting in a big N*rpm cycles-per-minute subsonic "noise". It can shake apart a house, and at certain frequencies has very nasty effects on your nervous system and/or musculature. (NASA abandoned their work on 'em because of that.)
Smaller personal-size windmills are often quite noisy, too, especially under high wind conditions. Not nice to your neighbors - or yourself. Noise level is a major selection criterion.
Note also that the manuals all warn you NEVER to mount one on your house, because of the much higher levels of mechanical noise conducted down the mast. And always to get an odd-number-of-blades (i.e. 3) mill to prevent a nasty vibration effect.
As for birds, I admit that I'm no ornithologist, and I haven't done a population survey. But I've never seen a bird get hit by a turbine, even when they're flying around in big flocks. They don't even go near the things, unless they're cruising around near ground level to look for food.
Which raptors do all the time.
The damage to bird populations has been a news item intermittently - though I haven't seen any numbers on whether it's a minor or major problem. But it's apparently a big enough problem that new mills are having their characteristics tweaked to be more visible to birds rather than optimized for efficiency.
Meanwhile, filling the low spot in the coastal range on the flyway with a few thousand mills is just ideal for chopping up non-trivial numbers of migrating birds. B-(
There have been a few turbine failures since the windfarm was built, but never a grass fire. The one failure I witnessed looked pretty spectacular, with a bright flash like a shorted transformer, but no parts fell off. I have never seen nor heard of molten metal flying out of the things. (Perhaps you're confusing the term "windmill" with "iron foundry.")
Check out the fires in the Altamont Pass area of California.
Gimme Wind, Gimme Solar, hell, I'll even take Geothermal, just make it clean, unobtrusive, and if you'd like, I can sell you some good land in my back yard.
What's "clean" and "unobtrusive" about renewable energy?
Wind: Those big windmills are noisy. You do NOT want to live near one. They chop up raptors and migrating birds wholesale, because the birds aren't able to recognize the need to dodge the blade coming at them at a significant fraction of the speed of sound. When they have a mechanical failure they often drop molten metal on the ground, starting a grass fire. (Windy areas tend to be VERY fire-prone and a wind farm has a LOT of mills, so it doesn't take a very high incidence of failure to create a high incidence of fires.)
Solar: BIG drop in albedo - grab maybe 15% of the incoming solar energy but absorb nearly ALL of it, in an area that USED to reflect well over half. LOTS of warming. And don't forget to count the energy and pollution costs of making the equipment.
Geothermal: Minimal amount available. Major drilling. Turning resort areas into plumbing farms. (Look at "the geysers" area in California - once a major resort, now a tiny power station with big pipes where the geysers used to be.) Pollution from releasing toxic minerals. Possible effects on earthquakes - including a potential for a major increase as a result of deep-well water injection.
Hydroelectric: We all know about the environmental impact of dams - both on fish and whatever lived in those nice valleys that got flooded.
The only minimally-polluting "renewable" energy source I know of would be space-solar. (And even there I'd wear my tinfoil hat and jumpsuit whenever I was within a few miles of the rectenna site. B-) )
So, a top view of the old scheme would look like:
::::::::
::::::::
..1....0....1....1....0..
||||||||
||||||||
The new scheme, from the top:
In this case 2x density, as the lower one has twice as many dots in the same area as the dashes of the upper.
I don't think that's quite right.
Unless I missed a transition from longitudinal to transverse recording, the old scheme produced a track like this (viewed either from the top or side:)
N---SS---NN--------SS---N
The vertical scheme lays the magnets INTO the medium rather than ALONG the track. Viewed from the side:
NSNNS
|||||
SNSSN
10110
Or, viewed from the top:
NSNNS
The problem with longitudinal recording is that, as you make the bits shorter, the magnetic fields of adjacent opposite-sense bits become more effective at trying to flip the singleton to go along with them. (Magnetic domains are more self-reenforcing, and thus stable, when they're long and thin, subject to flipping from thermal agitation at progressively lower temperatures as they become more short and fat.)
Make the bit too short and the neighbors "squeeze it out":
N--SSNN--S -> N--------S
1.1.0.1.1. -> 1.1.1.1.1.
But with vertical recording the adjacent, opposite-sense neighbors tend to STABILIZE the bit, and the smaller it gets, the more stable it gets. (And you're guaranteed a limit on the number of long runs of same-sense by the coding scheme, which has to flip now and then to keep the read electronics in sync.)
So you can shrink it WAY down - both along the track and across it - to the limit of the head technology to produce the original magnitizing field or the inherent domain size of the magnetic medium.
You can get FAR more than a factor of two in EACH direction - and multiply the two improvements to get the increase in bits per unit area.
(They've been talking about this for years. How come it's just hitting the field now? Did they go to transverse magnetization in the meantime? That would have similar advantages of smaller-is-more-stable. But the track would be far wider than with vertical, as would the gap, so you'd still save a bunch in one of the dimensions by standing the magnets on their head and packing them in tightly, like a bundle of sticks, rather than laying them on their sides.)
I fear that the RIAA will start to pressure the donors of these schools (where many $$'s for research and support come from).
Donors to schools like MIT are proabably techies.
Even if they aren't already riding a privacy hobbyhorse, they're likely to already have a bee in their bonnet about how the RIAA's pressure against any new technology that CAN BE USED to "pirate" music is crippling the industry.
- DAT tapes were crippled and virtually killed.
- Taxes on computer media.
- Attacks on authors of P2P software applications.
- "DRM" software and hardware that cripples computers and makes them more expensive and untweakable.
and the list goes on.
IMHO pressure on contributors to MIT from RIAA is likely to result in a flood of new money for MIT. B-)
Imagine the turmoil to a school administrator, knowing their students' life savings are about to get sucked up by the RIAA for sharing a few songs.
Even moreso: Imagine the turmoil of a school administrator, knowing their students' life savings are about to get sucked up by the RIAA because they wrote a useful tool for informtion cataloging that JUST HAPPENED to catalog some copyrighted files that some OTHER students were sharing.
Or a school administrator who realizes that the next target is probably the administrator, for allowing the school's net to be operated in such a way that students (those perpetual finders-of-ways-around-barriers) could use it to share copyrighted files.
Instead the HTML One-Way links, dead links, leeches, and no accountability system started. And it started ONLY because Xanadu was closed, secret system then (80's-early 90's), and HTTP/HTML was Public, known system.
AND because the people with the management's ear "rabidly prototyped" rather than designing and staying focussed on getting a product out, and pushed aside those in the project who asked them hard questions.
So they pushed the problems around from module to module rather than solving them. And they gave a presentation to the backers about "throway code" and how you only keep about 5-10% of the code in each pass through the loop. And this inability to undestand that a product is supposed to come out after a couple passes ("Q", not "O") ticked off their backers, who eventually backed out and left them back in the garage.
Xanadu had some good solutions - which is good, because they were trying to solve ALL the problems at once. But its "architects" never picked one and settled on it, so the rest of the crew could actually work on it (and not see their work discarded before it could even be finished).
Unless you can figure out how OSS WiFi drivers are piracy I think this is legal.
That's easy: They will claim it's piracy of THE DRIVERS - that the reverse-engineering process includes copying some non-trivial part of their code and putting the result into public use and from their into their competition's products.
"Oh yea? Show us the copied part?" "We'll do that in court. By the way, it's discovery time. Put down your software tools and come spend some time under oath helping us construct our case against you."
It's bogus, of course. But if Microsoft is pressuring them (as evidenced by their abandonment of Linux support) they might play cat's paw for them some more.
The DMCA only covers reverse engineering as it pertains to copyright circumvention. [...] there is a specific clause [] that allows for reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability.
Which won't stop them from suing - any more than the same clause stopped the RIAA from going after DeCSS (and winning!)
Looks like I'll be switching once my "committment" runs out.
The place to fight this is on two fronts:
- The courts. Because if they win even once they'll be back for more. "Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute." Because:
- The checkbook. So it costs them more in lost subscriptions than it gains them in settlements and "reduced piracy".
There's a huge flaw in your analogy, because there's only one real use for cocaine: getting high. (Well, okay, two uses, because you can also sell cocaine to someone else, but that's beside the point.)
There's a flaw in your analogy, too. Cocaine is also used in eye surgery, and is the medically best choice of a range of drugs for several other treatments.
The signal gets weaker as it passes through walls. Therefore, the signal strength can not be easilly be correlated to a distance [...]
Perhaps a better way would be to use "ping" to check the travel times, rather than the signal strength, compensating for any delays imposed by TCP/IP-stacks and hardware etc. Is this even possible?
It's possible. But IMHO indoors the variability of the response time of the processor to the message will probably introduce far too much jitter for the result to be useful. Finding the right neighborhood, or even the right house, yes. Finding the right desk, no.
But I understand that some of the underlying net-discovery and scheduling protocols (where the cards are talking directly to each other and picking times to transmit) give you a much better measurement of transit time, which may be good enough for the purpose.
Perhaps someone with more intimate knowlege can fill us in.
= = = = =
Given a good measure of transit time, two base stations can construct a hyperboloid on which the mobile is located. (With uncertainty it's actually the space between two hyperboloids.) Add a third and you intersect two hyperboloids, giving you a curved line. Add a fourth and you've got it located to a single point (or two points if all four bases are in the same plane).
It's basically GPS or LORAN run backward (with an extra base station relative to LORAN to give you altitude, since you don't know you're "on the ocean's surface").
It's easy to find cases where people get light sentences for crimes that, at least to me, seem much more damaging to society than a few swapped files. How do you justify asking for billions of dollars of so-called damages or years of jail time when people who shoplift some CDs receive little if any punishment?
Copyright violations have always had draconian punishments. That's partly because the chance of catching an infringer is low - so the penalty must have a high multiplier to make infringement a losing proposition.
"(Only) An eye for an eye" makes crime a paying business. Rob 10 people of $100. Get caught once and have to give THAT $100 back. Result (ignoring other costs): $1,000 gross income, $100 cost of doing business, $900 profit. But get socked for $3,000 for the time you get caught and it becomes $2,000 loss.
Now look at how many people copy that $19.98 CD for each one caught...
What is the department's current understanding of the boundary between "Fair Use" and infringment?
For software:
- Reverse engineering: For interface / file format compatability? For workalike replacement? How much can proprietary code be examined? What must be done to stay legal (or at least beyond the interest of the Departmen) and PROVE it?
- Code copying: How much before infringement begins? Is there a clear definition of the boundary if it isn't lines of code?
For music/movies/other entertainment programming:
- Time-shifting: Is it "Fair Use" to capture broadcast programming for listening/viewing at some other time?
- Space shifting? Is it "Fair Use" to make a copy to use in your car, workspace computer, etc.?
- Backup? Is it OK to make a backup copy - provided if you sell the copy or original the other is also transferred or destroyed?
- Sampling for inclusion of snippets in other works? If so, how much is "Fair Use" before "Infringement" begins.
In either software or entertainment programming: Does the department interpret the DMCA or other anti-"piracy" laws as trumping "Fair Use" rights, such that activity that would be legal under copyright "Fair Use" alone is illegal under anti-piracy laws?
In particular: Does the department believe that defeating copy-protection is a crime even if it is only used for activities that would be "Fair Use" if copy-protection were NOT defeated?
I recognize that this is both a matter of policy and court rulings, and that both are subject to change in the future. I also realize that the opinions of the department and the courts may differ - what I'm after is the department's current interpretation of what MAY be illegal and IS likely to result in prosecution by the department.
I have wanted a tightening of a certain portion of the spec since ANSI's deliberations on the first standard. (Actually, I think I corresponded with Bjarne about it even before then.) I'll paraphrase it here (rather than spending time to put it into correct standard-ese).
1) Beginning with the execution of the first user-written statement of a constructor of the most-baseward class where a virtual function is defined, and ending immediately after the execution of the last user-written statement of that class' destructor, it shall be explicitly legal to call the virtual member function via a "this" pointer (or a copy of its value in an appropriate pointer type).
(This may be done even from code which has no special relationship to the object, other than knowlege of the value of a pointer to the instance and enough of the class' declaration to use it to call the virtual function.)
2) When a virtual function of a base class is overridden by a new definition in a derived class, such a call will execute:
a) The base-class version if performed before the exectuion of the first user-written statement of a constructor of the derived class.
b) The derived-class version if performed during or after the execution of the first user-written statement of the constructor of the derived class and before or during the execution of the last user-written statement of the destructor of the derived class.
c) The base-class version if performed after the execution of the last user-written statement of the desctructor of the derived class.
In particular: If such a call is made during the construction or destruction of member variables or objects of the derived class, the base-class version of the virtual function (if such is defined) is the one executed.
= = = = = = =
In a vpointer implementation this would correspond to the storing of the derived class vpointer as the last action before executing the body of the constructor, and storing the base class vpointer as the first action after executing the body of the destructor.
= = = = = = =
This is not a frivolous, nit-pick.
Making this change enables such functionality as base classes registering their instances during construction, with the behavior of the instances being appropriately promoted as they are built up, even if the behavior happens to be invoked during construction or destruction.
For example: Mark-and-sweep garbage collection of C++ objects can be built using a base class for garbage-collectable objects containing a virtual member function to encode knowlege of the derived object's pointers to perform the marking phase. But without the guarantees of this proposal, constructors and destructors of member objects (and even the containing class itself) become VERY limited in the complexity of behavior they can exhibit, since they must not allocate memory in a way that might preciptiate a garbage-collector activation.
Even absent this (and other) concrete example(s), the proposal would tend to make classes more flexible and less error-prone, because virtual functions become available during construction yet the derived class versions can't be invoked unless the derived class members (and the class itself) are initialized but not finalized. (With this guarantee the only issue of invoking a member of a partially-constructed class is within the class' own constructor and destructor, where it can be handled by programmer care. Without it the member objects may invoke derived class behavior on an uninitialized level of the object, or fail to perform necessary actions appropriate to the current level).
The proposal is upwardly-compatable because it simply tightens requirements on a subset of already allowed behavior. (The first ANSI C++ standard explicitly gave no guarantee of which overriding of virtual member functions would be invoked by a member object constructor or destructor of functions it called, while the revised standard didn't guarantee that EITHER would be invoked - essentially saying "Don't call them from there. Anything might happen.")
Well one tape = 166709 units * 64 (k) / 1024 / 1024 = ~10.175GB
About one second on an OC-192 fiber.
That figure is per tape, the actual shipment has 1,139 tapes, I think. 10.175GB * 1,139 = ~11.6TB. That *is* impressive bandwith.
Call it 20 minutes. Or 1:20 on a measly OC-48.
Sorry, but now that I'm working with fibers I'm just no longer impressed by the bandwidth of a busload, planeload, or even a cruise-missile load of backup tapes. Even an ICBM-load is barely in the running.
That's progress for you. Time to switch to CDs or DVDs if you want to keep the move-the-medium approach ahead of the communication infrastructure. Even that may not last.
Now what WILL impress me is being able to afford to have a SONET ring bundle running through (and terminating in a router at) my house.
(Although my previous house WAS adjacent to just about the only street in the bay area where BOTH of Pac Bell's rings ran down the same set of manholes. So I came within maybe 50 feet. B-) )
I understand that there's already a dating service (in Japan?) that is somewhat similar:
- The subscribers fill out typical dating-service questionaires, and supply their cellphone numbers.
- The service tracks their cellphone locations.
- When two people with a sufficiently high compatability score are within a short distance of each other, BOTH their cellphones ring.
Its beyond annoying when you have to stop because someone in your group has to check the gps corodanites for the place you are at.
So don't stop. They can get 'em on the fly - and they'll be good enough to get back within eyeshot.
Why host the page on your own site when google already HAS THE CACHE
Because, if the page changes, the google cache will also eventually change.
Don't you think we want to see the version this article is talking about, rather than a later spin-controlled version?
We require licenses to do all kinds of things, why not at least require a literacy standard for voting?
Because voting is a right, not a privilege.
"Literacy tests" have historically been used to swing elections by disenfranchising certain groups opposed to those in power.
The classic example - and the one that resulted in such tests being kicked out by the courts - was their use to keep freed blacks (and poor whites) from voting in the south after the Civil War / War Between the States. (The tests, and their administration were, of course, bogus. Like requiring the voter to read a headline - and giving the black/poor-white voters a Chinese newspaper.)
While we're at it, are you ready for a "Public Affairs Test" before you can write about politics? A "Comparitive Religion" test before you can go to a church of your choice? Or similar bogus tests before you can buy a gun, travel, own property, send a letter, address a crowd, defend yourself in court, and so on?