True, but it takes a judge to administer the paddle once your pants are down.
The people in charge of the groups that own the code should get together and give permission for something like FSF to pursue this case in court (FSF has a few lawyers, I believe), and FSF gets to keep any money won in the suit. This appears to be an open-and-shut case. X-Stream gets shut down, FSF can try to get a lot of money from them, and the general public gets the source code to this nice (if stolen) software. Sounds like a win-win proposition to me.
Just in case you live in an apartment complex filled with other wireless networks, microwave ovens, cordless phones, etc. Under these conditions, wireless can be problematic. Wired always works, and you don't have to worry if Aunt Tilly decides to microwave some popcorn.
This just seems like a shameless whoring to get affiliate credit with B&N under the guise of a book review.
I might be inclined to agree with you had he actualy said that the book was worth buying, which he didn't. As it is, an affiliate link does not bother me.
Steve Gibson (author of Spinrite, among other things), has been on a crusade for years to get raw sockets taken out. See his web page. And I tend to trust this guy. He makes Windows programs in assembly! That is the geek equivalent of crushing a beer can on your head! That may make you question his sanity, but certainly not his technical knowledge.
Implemnt raw sockets, get blasted by one security "expert." Take them out, and get blasted by another.
For what it's worth, I think that raw sockets in user-mode are a bad idea. The average user does NOT need raw sockets.
Well, for LCD panels, making them 3D is almost trivial. Of course, instead of using a single sheet of polarizing material, you would have to have a checkerboard sheet of polarizing material, where the "red" squares would have one polarization, and the "black" ones the other.
Conceptually, this is easy. Making the proper polarizing material and aligning it would be a manufacturing challenge, but the theory is so obvious, I do not think that anybody could even file a patent.
The only down sides is that the manufacturing cost would increase, and the effective resolution (and brightness) would decrease by 1/2. And, of course, you would need to wear polarizing glasses.
Why was this green lighted? I've posted about this before. Someone, somewhere, exchanged sexual favors with a member of the slashdot editorial staff.
If this were true,/. would disappear is a matter of hours. There would be absolutely no new stories posted. Have you seen pictures of the slashdot editorial staff?
If *I* were attempting this stupid stunt, I would consider bouyancy to be a bonus. Being above the water is better than being below it.
And drysuits are a lot warmer than wetsuits. Pro divers who have to work in arctic water use a drysuit. And they know a LOT more about diving that I do.
Oh. His request CAN be done. Advance payment of $100K required. Total bill is likely to be in the %500K range.
You can do almost anything with enough money. Man went to the moon in 1969. The only reason that we don't do it today is that it is terribly expensive.
What the parent says is correct, but let me elaborate. Let's assume that you DID have the knowledge and education to undertake this. Here is what you would need...
1) A complete schematic capture system with a really good board layout tool. My company provides one for me, so I do not know how much they paid. But I would guess that for one license, you would have to spend $10K or so. Certainly more than $5K. Note that there are budget packages out there ($2K or so), but you get what you pay for.
2) You will need to get the board manufacturered. Expect at least $2K or so for a handfull of boards (probably closer to $5K). Since you will not get it right on the first try, you will have to get multiple revisions made.
3) Buy parts. Some items have a minimum buy quantity. You might need to get entire tape-n-reel packs.
4) Get the board built. This is not something that you can do yourself, unless you have $100K equipment lying around. Contract this out. My best guess is between $1000 and $5000 for small quantities. I am not sure about this part, though.
5) Debug. You do have test equipment, I hope. Minimum equipment will be a good logic analyzer and oscope. The minimum that I would recommend would be an Agilent frame with a good analyzer card, pattern generator card, and o-scope card (tektronics make awesome scopes, but I do not like their logic analyzers). Expect to drop at least $30K on this. You can rent, though, if money is tight;) Now, if you want to make your job easier, you might want to get some specialized equipment. Special analyzers exist which analyze one type of interface. You should probably have one for HyperTransport (assuming AMD), one to analyze the DRAM channels, one to analyze PCI, one to analyze USB, etc. You get the idea. This stuff will be used a lot less, so you should rent it.
6) Let's assume that the hardware works. Did you want a BIOS with that? License it. I have absolutely no idea how much this costs. You will likely have to costomize the BIOS for your board. You might be able to do this with open-source tools. Expect to spend some time on this, though.
7) You want that done this year? While you hold down a day job? Expect to spend $10/day on no-doze and Jolt cola.
As you can see, there is a LOT involved. The only reason that you can get a motherboard for $100 or so is that they make a LOT of them. The first motherboard is incredibly expensive. The second one is dirt cheap.
You, sir, are correct. One of the most insightful explanations that I have read can be found here, in an article entitled "Dell and AMD." Worth a read, even for an article that is two months old.
Anybody describing "Maglight Solitaire" as "nice and bright" must be a troll;)
Seriously. Let the light run for an hour straight on one battery and then tell me how bright it is. My LED light is smaller than the Solitaire, and I can run it for at least three hours solid and still have at least 1/2 of its brightness.
I just bought a keychain LED flashlight today, because they last forever on one of those little watch batteries.
I love LED lights, and own several myself. But I should caution you NOT to believe everything that you read. The life of the bulb itself is certainly several years of continuous usage. A lifetime if used even for 15 minutes each day.
But many of the less scrupulous manufacturers rediculously overstate the battery life of their products. Using only button-cells, you would be lucky to get three or four hours of continuous usage. Using the light for only a minute here and a minute there would get you more life, though.
What happens is that the light output falls off over time. But the light is still white. So the manufacturere can arbitrarily choose any point on the curve and call that the "useful life." What would start out as a room-filling light might still be called "useful" when it is barely bright enough to read a matchbook from 3 inches away.
I would recommend a unit that used AAA batteries. AAAs are easier to change, cheaper, and easier to find that 2032 button cells. I carry an Arc AAA with me, but that company, sadly, went under. I would recommend something from these people. Their "Matterhorn AAA" seems very nice, and hase nice reviews. Note that I am NOT affiliated with this company, and I do not even own one of their lights. But their lights is most similar to the Arc AAA (and the similarities are more than coincidental).
128K MP3 = approximately 10X compression. FLAC = approximately 2X compression.
Fo FLAC takes up 5X hard drive space as 128K MP3. If you are a true audio nut, I doubt that you encode most of your stuff at a mere 128K. So FLAC files actually start to seem attractive with todays hard drives.
For that matter, $50 after rebate would get you over 150 albums of hard drive space -- stored as.WAVs!!!
Back with hard drives were 2BG, this was a big deal. Now, a common hard drive is in the 200GB range. Storing as a.WAV is actually practical now.
Virtual Desktop Manager, manage up to four desktops, a feature from others UIs that is missing in Windows
Danger, Will Robinson, Danger.
I have tried this, and found it seriously lacking. Windows was not designed for this sort of thing, and software, in general, does not know how to handle it. I have found that it is unstable, and it is impossible to move windows from one desktop to another.
Audio 20,000 Hz. Gigabit ethernet = 1,000,000,000 Hz.
** WAVELENGTH ** NOTE: I assume that the speed of a signal in a wire is 0.8 times the speed of light. Gigabit ethernet = aprox 9 inches (length of one bit) Audio = approx 7 1/2 miles (wavelength of highest audible frequency).
So, what you say is true, but it only matters if the length of the cable is comparable to the wavelength of the signal or longer.
If anybody has speaker cables longer than 4 miles, then they should definately spring for some controlled-impedance cable.
Yup. This is a win-win proposition for them. They just scored major brownie points with major geeks (myself included). I can tell you that if I was looking for a new vid card right now, I would seriously look into their stuff. A week ago, I would have looked ONLY at nVidia.
The impact is that they will likely see a noticable improvement in sales because of this. And as far as their IP, nobody can even come close to nVidia and ATI. You only have to worry about your IP if you are concerned about the people behind you catching up. If you ARE in last place, you have nothing to loose;)
Here are some dumb questions. They got it to oscillate. What fed it? If they have a frequency synthesizer capable of running at 600GHz, then to get a transistor that can run at 600GHz, they just have to open up the frequency synthesizer -- there will be a few in there.
If, on the other hand, they had it self-oscillate, then how did they measure this? If they used an oscilloscope that can measure this, there are some 600GHz transistors in the oscilloscope.
So, if you build the world's fastest transistor, then how do you know how fast it is going since it is obviously well beyond the range of your test equipment?
Proof? Examples? What you say sure makes Microsoft sound all evil (insert cackling laugh here). But how is this even remotely possible? ANYBODY can make a driver for Windows. Microsoft can control which drivers are included with the OS, but any driver is only a CD-Rom or download away.
Suppose that Linksys totally honked off Billy Boy. What could he do to stop Linksys, other than intentionally trying to break their drivers. And if he did an extreme move like that, his legal woes (as well as PR problems) would certainly increase. Well, there is also the matter of approved drivers, but I have not heard of M$ showing favoritism there. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I am not a huge fan of M$. But they do enough bad things that we do not need to go around inventing more.
Funny thing is, Fedora Core 3 worked fine the first time on my Dell laptop. So did FC2 in 2004. I guess Linux has been ready for the laptop for some time, just not the author's laptop.
So, by defenition, if it works on your laptop then it is "laptop ready." Not likely! If a distro is ready for the laptop, then it should work OK on the vast majority of laptops, not just the one that you happen to have.
Slashdot Mirror
True, but it takes a judge to administer the paddle once your pants are down.
The people in charge of the groups that own the code should get together and give permission for something like FSF to pursue this case in court (FSF has a few lawyers, I believe), and FSF gets to keep any money won in the suit. This appears to be an open-and-shut case. X-Stream gets shut down, FSF can try to get a lot of money from them, and the general public gets the source code to this nice (if stolen) software. Sounds like a win-win proposition to me.
Just in case you live in an apartment complex filled with other wireless networks, microwave ovens, cordless phones, etc. Under these conditions, wireless can be problematic. Wired always works, and you don't have to worry if Aunt Tilly decides to microwave some popcorn.
And a couple of years in court over patent issues...
Palm dumped Graffiti for Graffiti 2 because they were sued. From a user's perspective, this is a step backwards...
Yeah. This "Gutenberg" guy invented something a few centuries ago that was supposed to make books cheaper. I wonder whatever happened to that?
Microsoft can't win no matter WHAT they do.
Steve Gibson (author of Spinrite, among other things), has been on a crusade for years to get raw sockets taken out. See his web page. And I tend to trust this guy. He makes Windows programs in assembly! That is the geek equivalent of crushing a beer can on your head! That may make you question his sanity, but certainly not his technical knowledge.
Implemnt raw sockets, get blasted by one security "expert." Take them out, and get blasted by another.
For what it's worth, I think that raw sockets in user-mode are a bad idea. The average user does NOT need raw sockets.
Well, for LCD panels, making them 3D is almost trivial. Of course, instead of using a single sheet of polarizing material, you would have to have a checkerboard sheet of polarizing material, where the "red" squares would have one polarization, and the "black" ones the other.
Conceptually, this is easy. Making the proper polarizing material and aligning it would be a manufacturing challenge, but the theory is so obvious, I do not think that anybody could even file a patent.
The only down sides is that the manufacturing cost would increase, and the effective resolution (and brightness) would decrease by 1/2. And, of course, you would need to wear polarizing glasses.
Why hasn't this been done before?
If *I* were attempting this stupid stunt, I would consider bouyancy to be a bonus. Being above the water is better than being below it.
And drysuits are a lot warmer than wetsuits. Pro divers who have to work in arctic water use a drysuit. And they know a LOT more about diving that I do.
Oh. His request CAN be done. Advance payment of $100K required. Total bill is likely to be in the %500K range.
You can do almost anything with enough money. Man went to the moon in 1969. The only reason that we don't do it today is that it is terribly expensive.
What the parent says is correct, but let me elaborate. Let's assume that you DID have the knowledge and education to undertake this. Here is what you would need...
;) Now, if you want to make your job easier, you might want to get some specialized equipment. Special analyzers exist which analyze one type of interface. You should probably have one for HyperTransport (assuming AMD), one to analyze the DRAM channels, one to analyze PCI, one to analyze USB, etc. You get the idea. This stuff will be used a lot less, so you should rent it.
1) A complete schematic capture system with a really good board layout tool. My company provides one for me, so I do not know how much they paid. But I would guess that for one license, you would have to spend $10K or so. Certainly more than $5K. Note that there are budget packages out there ($2K or so), but you get what you pay for.
2) You will need to get the board manufacturered. Expect at least $2K or so for a handfull of boards (probably closer to $5K). Since you will not get it right on the first try, you will have to get multiple revisions made.
3) Buy parts. Some items have a minimum buy quantity. You might need to get entire tape-n-reel packs.
4) Get the board built. This is not something that you can do yourself, unless you have $100K equipment lying around. Contract this out. My best guess is between $1000 and $5000 for small quantities. I am not sure about this part, though.
5) Debug. You do have test equipment, I hope. Minimum equipment will be a good logic analyzer and oscope. The minimum that I would recommend would be an Agilent frame with a good analyzer card, pattern generator card, and o-scope card (tektronics make awesome scopes, but I do not like their logic analyzers). Expect to drop at least $30K on this. You can rent, though, if money is tight
6) Let's assume that the hardware works. Did you want a BIOS with that? License it. I have absolutely no idea how much this costs. You will likely have to costomize the BIOS for your board. You might be able to do this with open-source tools. Expect to spend some time on this, though.
7) You want that done this year? While you hold down a day job? Expect to spend $10/day on no-doze and Jolt cola.
As you can see, there is a LOT involved. The only reason that you can get a motherboard for $100 or so is that they make a LOT of them. The first motherboard is incredibly expensive. The second one is dirt cheap.
You, sir, are correct. One of the most insightful explanations that I have read can be found here, in an article entitled "Dell and AMD." Worth a read, even for an article that is two months old.
Anybody describing "Maglight Solitaire" as "nice and bright" must be a troll ;)
Seriously. Let the light run for an hour straight on one battery and then tell me how bright it is. My LED light is smaller than the Solitaire, and I can run it for at least three hours solid and still have at least 1/2 of its brightness.
I love LED lights, and own several myself. But I should caution you NOT to believe everything that you read. The life of the bulb itself is certainly several years of continuous usage. A lifetime if used even for 15 minutes each day.
But many of the less scrupulous manufacturers rediculously overstate the battery life of their products. Using only button-cells, you would be lucky to get three or four hours of continuous usage. Using the light for only a minute here and a minute there would get you more life, though.
What happens is that the light output falls off over time. But the light is still white. So the manufacturere can arbitrarily choose any point on the curve and call that the "useful life." What would start out as a room-filling light might still be called "useful" when it is barely bright enough to read a matchbook from 3 inches away.
I would recommend a unit that used AAA batteries. AAAs are easier to change, cheaper, and easier to find that 2032 button cells. I carry an Arc AAA with me, but that company, sadly, went under. I would recommend something from these people. Their "Matterhorn AAA" seems very nice, and hase nice reviews. Note that I am NOT affiliated with this company, and I do not even own one of their lights. But their lights is most similar to the Arc AAA (and the similarities are more than coincidental).
Really?
.WAVs!!!
.WAV is actually practical now.
128K MP3 = approximately 10X compression.
FLAC = approximately 2X compression.
Fo FLAC takes up 5X hard drive space as 128K MP3. If you are a true audio nut, I doubt that you encode most of your stuff at a mere 128K. So FLAC files actually start to seem attractive with todays hard drives.
For that matter, $50 after rebate would get you over 150 albums of hard drive space -- stored as
Back with hard drives were 2BG, this was a big deal. Now, a common hard drive is in the 200GB range. Storing as a
I have tried this, and found it seriously lacking. Windows was not designed for this sort of thing, and software, in general, does not know how to handle it. I have found that it is unstable, and it is impossible to move windows from one desktop to another.
Audio 20,000 Hz.
Gigabit ethernet = 1,000,000,000 Hz.
** WAVELENGTH **
NOTE: I assume that the speed of a signal in a wire is 0.8 times the speed of light.
Gigabit ethernet = aprox 9 inches (length of one bit)
Audio = approx 7 1/2 miles (wavelength of highest audible frequency).
So, what you say is true, but it only matters if the length of the cable is comparable to the wavelength of the signal or longer.
If anybody has speaker cables longer than 4 miles, then they should definately spring for some controlled-impedance cable.
Yup. This is a win-win proposition for them. They just scored major brownie points with major geeks (myself included). I can tell you that if I was looking for a new vid card right now, I would seriously look into their stuff. A week ago, I would have looked ONLY at nVidia.
;)
The impact is that they will likely see a noticable improvement in sales because of this. And as far as their IP, nobody can even come close to nVidia and ATI. You only have to worry about your IP if you are concerned about the people behind you catching up. If you ARE in last place, you have nothing to loose
Bzzzt. Wrong. Thank you for playing.
Every mixer circuit (needed for heterodying) that I have ever seen uses transistors. That is my point.
And the only non-linear devices that I know of are semiconductors and vacuum tubes.
OK. So, no P4. But how about an oscillator?
Here are some dumb questions. They got it to oscillate. What fed it? If they have a frequency synthesizer capable of running at 600GHz, then to get a transistor that can run at 600GHz, they just have to open up the frequency synthesizer -- there will be a few in there.
If, on the other hand, they had it self-oscillate, then how did they measure this? If they used an oscilloscope that can measure this, there are some 600GHz transistors in the oscilloscope.
So, if you build the world's fastest transistor, then how do you know how fast it is going since it is obviously well beyond the range of your test equipment?
Will this generate maximum heat?
I would think that something like Prime95, while larger, would be better.
Your method will exercise a small portion of the ALU. Prime95 will pump up the RAM, and floating-point unit. More transistors switching = more heat!
Proof? Examples? What you say sure makes Microsoft sound all evil (insert cackling laugh here). But how is this even remotely possible? ANYBODY can make a driver for Windows. Microsoft can control which drivers are included with the OS, but any driver is only a CD-Rom or download away.
Suppose that Linksys totally honked off Billy Boy. What could he do to stop Linksys, other than intentionally trying to break their drivers. And if he did an extreme move like that, his legal woes (as well as PR problems) would certainly increase. Well, there is also the matter of approved drivers, but I have not heard of M$ showing favoritism there. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I am not a huge fan of M$. But they do enough bad things that we do not need to go around inventing more.
So, by defenition, if it works on your laptop then it is "laptop ready." Not likely! If a distro is ready for the laptop, then it should work OK on the vast majority of laptops, not just the one that you happen to have.
My wife, for one, welcomes our new 15% increased orgasm overlords.