The funny thing is that, if real, this is most likely a worthless patent. The patent will likely expire long before something like this is even possible.
Sort of like patenting an idea for making money by mining hydrogen gas from stars in a distant galaxy.
Perhaps. but the parent of your post has a BIG point... The "lowest common denominator" is NOT going to run HL2 or Doom3. That $299 e-machines won't have the graphical cajones. Neither will that top-of-the-line gaming system from four years ago. It takes a modern system to be able to run modern FPS. Modern systems have DVD drives. Period.
Exactly what I was thinking. I want a 3rd (and possibly 4th) arm. THAT would be cool. Especially if one had a laer on it! Come to think of it, I could use it to control a shark - with a laser on it's head!
But, on a more practical side... This process is obviously far from perfect. If the whole thing went crazy, the worst thing would be having your TV stuck on the spanish channel at full blast:(
On the other hand, with a robot arm, some serious bodily injury could occur. Even a weak arm could have enough strength to poke your eye out. If somebody was using their fancy arm to slice a tomato, one slip could prove fatal.
Still, I suspect that this will be eventually done if this technique works. But it will take time, lots of legal waivers, and a lot of insurance.
I know people who sometimes connect with a 56k modem, and me myself, sometimes I connect with my mobile phone (GPRS, 10kb/sec max as far as I could see). It wouldn't be so nice to have bandwith sucked up by all those prefetching (and no, I don't want to change, neither the browser neither the Search Engine).
It is for people like you that the created pre-fetching. If you actually click on what is pre-fetched, the page loads faster. If you click on something else-the pre-fetch is aborted. Nothing to loose.
Of course, this assumes that you do NOT pay by the byte (as you might on a mobile phone). For a modem connection, it is OK. Also, it assumes that you have nothing going on in the background. If all you have running is Firefox, this is a good thing. On the other hand, if you have a torrent running in the background, then Firefox gets faster at the expense of the torrent.
But here is an idea. If you can find some really good old UPSs off of ebay for cheap with dead batteries, then you can probably scavenge just the electronics off of them. The batteries are very heavy, and expensive to lug/ship. They are also usually the first items to die in any UPS (well, that and fans).
When you get there, build some wood cabinets, install the board that you brought with you, and hook the whole thing up to a car battery.
The electronics determine the maximum amount of equipment that you can hang off of the UPS. The battery determines how long it will last. So if you chain a couple of car batteries together in parallel, you might be able to get a couple of hours of run time.
A UPS uses gell-cell batteries, but the voltages and chemistries are similar enough that you should be able to use a car battery (but this only works if the UPS uses 12V batteries). Note that car batteries are not intended to be deep-cycled (marine batteries are better for that), but sometimes you are forced to improvise when facing difficult circumstances. Also, if you use a battery that is a whole lot larger than the original, the UPS may take a very long time to recharge it.
Of course, this assumes that car batteries are available. If this is not the case, then please ignore me.
Welll, you COULD stop people from transmitting with a large chain link fence. If you fence off the entire area within 1 mile, you can be sure that nobody will transmit within 1 mile...
OK. With that sarcastic answer out of the way, the parent is completely correct. You CANNOT keep other people from transmitting on your frequency. But what you CAN do it know if the received signal is from the desired source by using cryptography (assuming that your information is digital). Of course, jamming is still a problem, and the only three ways around that that I know of are: 1) more power, 2) Better antennas, 3) spread spectrum. None of them are fool-proof.
On the other hand, if your source is analog (voice, for example), then your choices are now very limited. The only way that I can think of is to use spread-specturm, where the specific frequency-hopping scheme is the secret key. Note that this is NOT the sort of things that you try unless you really know what you are doing. To go from zero knowledge to working spread spectrum on your own is impossible. Another solution is to convert the analog to digital, and then you can use any cryptographic solution that you want.
As others have posted, you could use a highly directional antenna. This does not make it impossible for others to transmit. It just means that they have to move to a different location, or they have to pump up the power.
They also have an opportunity to sell quite a few Sony-priced UMD-R drives for computers, if they have enough vision to do so. Plus the market for UMD-R discs. I smell profit here, and I'm hoping Sony does, too. Time will tell...
This will never happen. If people can actually write to those discs, that opens up the door for modchips and piracy. Note how it took Sony a few years to grudgingly admit that MP3 players might be something that they ought to sell -- and that is only because others were filling the market quite nicely. They took the "If you can't beat them, join them" option -- but it took several years of trying to beat them.
I cannot see a 3rd party releasing a UMD-R drive anytime soon, and Sony WON'T be the first. In this case, there will be no "them" to beat.
Re:First line of the article
on
Inside the PSP
·
· Score: 1
And how is that significant? At a local game store, I tried out the new Metroid title. You have to tap the screen to shoot? And how is that an improvement over a simple button?
I can see a touch-screen being useful in a FEW circumstances. But it sounds like a solution in search of a problem. And game makers have to make SOME use of the touch screen just because it's there -- even if it makes no sense. I invoke the wookie defence now.
Note that I am not a Nintendo basher. The only game machines that I own is a GameCube and a GBA (well, and my PC and the commodore-64 stick).
Re:Anarchy isn't crime or destruction
on
Inside the PSP
·
· Score: 1
Disassembling somebody *else's* PSP is criminal. Disassembling your own is merely art.
Nope. That plastic case is a copy-protection feature. Bypassing it is a violation of the DMCA. A screwdriver is now considered to be a circumvention device. Turn in your screwdrivers to the nearest police station, or face procesuction (maybe persecution).
Perhaps. But you should still have one copy of M$ office. Before sending files to other people, it might be nice to be able to check the "benchmark" just to verify that your formatting survived. OO does a good job of reading/writing M$ formats. But I have seen cases where the margins and spacing are just different enough to turn a one-page document into a two-page one. For most applications, they are close enough. But I can easily image a few cases where the exact formatting matters.
You can try to make an existing theory explain any new evidence, and if you're smart enough you'll succeed
Yup. Like how some guy came up with the "inflationary model" for the big bang. Shoehorn this in because the current theory of the big bang could not explain the homogeneity of the background radiation. Even though nobody knows what would cause the inflation, or how to stop it, or even any good reason WHY it should happen.
But that has never stoped any cosmologists.
And I was not presenting rigorous scientific truth. Just something to think about...
Actually, current creationist belief goes something like this:
Dinosaurs are really big lizards.
Dragons, as described in legends, are really big lizards.
Dragons=dinosaurs.
In fact, in the book of Job, a beast (behemoth) is partially described which could fit a brontosaurus. On fact, no land mammal fits this description, but a dinosaur would. The bible also mentions in a few other places things which could fit the dinosaur/dragon mold.
One difference is, you can hide Internet Explorer.
Riiiiight...
I switched over to FireFox a long time ago. I still encounter software that launches IE whenever you click on "help." Very annoying. I know which browser I want to use, I just wish that ALL software would respect that choice.
Yes, they are. Note that I am NOT in any way, shape, or form, an office expert.
But, AFAIK, to get new toolbars to pop up, you have to copy files to the hard drive. If somebody else already has the ability to copy stuff to the hard drive, then you have worse things to worry about than Office toolbars.
It is sort of like Fort Knox worrying that somebody might break in and steal office supplies;)
It works for me! You have to think of.PDF as being a form of "electronic paper".
A complete noob trying to save his spreadsheet might be a bit annoyed if he tried the new "acrobat" spreadsheet format, just to find all of his formulas blown away;)
So having it as a "print" option makes more sense than a "save" option.
By not choosing, you have made a choice, and that choice is "infinite."
So, I can choose 500 as a good number, but you would say that 2,000 would be better. Who is right? I don't know, but I do know that if I chose 500, then I would be a lot happier with 2,000 than with infinite.
The trouble is, you've no idea how many processes I need, either. And neither do Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, Bruce Perens, the Debian process-ulimit-policy-discuss mailing list, the Grinch or Eric Bakke. That makes it pretty hard to set a "sane" limit that works for everyone
First of all, let's separate the world in to two different type of people: normal users, and power users. Normal users will run a web browser, office applications, an e-mail client, etc. Power users are the ones who always need more resources.
Limits should be set substantially higher than what a normal user will ever need. A normal user should never even bump into the limits.
Now, if you ARE a power user, then you should know how to change those limits. This gives you the best of all possible worlds. You get protection, but you can CHANGE THE DEFAULTS if you need to! Simple. If you are setting up apache, you should know enough about it to set reasonable limits.
Let me put it another way. What would you think if I said "ZoneAlarm doesn't know what ports I need open. It should open up ALL ports by default. I will shut down the ones that I don't need." That would be a pretty useless firewall.
There was already one video game crash in the early 80's. I wonder how much the current situation looks like the one back then? The "Great Game Crash of 2006?" Maybe!
I finally picked up a GameCube for my children last weekend - my first console since the original PS. I snagged a deal at Worst Buy of two classic games for $25. If all games were $50, then I would not have purchased anything! Lower prices make me buy more! I like to buy when I can get a deal. I do NOT buy when I feel like I am being ripped off. It is not just about price, it is also about perceptions.
How many motherboards come with optical audio outputs now? How many users actually use them?
How many people who have optical audio speakers have been annoyed when their DVDs would not play any sound, due to a stupid and short-sighted copy protection scheme? I would happily pay $20 or $30 more to go completely optical, but having a stupid limitation like that totally breaks the deal.
Here are the questions that I ask about new tech: 1) What can it allow me to do that I cannot do now? 2) What will it stop me from doing that I can do now? Some very old VCRs completely ignore macrovision, so older tech is sometimes the best. 3) How much does it cost?
But you are absolutely right about "outstripping our ability to care," but I also think that it is also outstripping our ability to afford it too. I would love to have a nice HD setup with surround sound. HD is too expensive right now. Plus, I do not watch much television in the first place. Would I take it for $100? Sure! Would I pay $500 for the honor of having HD? Nope. Not worth it.
And surround sound is out because I would have to somehow get a half-dozen speakers mounted to walls and ceilings, and run all sorts of ugly wires. Two speakers are easy - on either side of the TV. Six speakers only work for people who have one entire room dedicated to the television. So, this is not a factor of money, but one of convenience. Surround sound would be cool, but is not necessary.
Slashdot gets sued for giving out trade secrets. Apple demands to know who leaked this information, which would have revolutionized the computer world as we know it.
Microsoft, being the copying thieves that they are, will jump all over this and release their OWN two-button mouse soon. Just you watch. They stole every other good idea from Apple (well, except for security and stability, which they still have not stolen from anybody yet).
Logitech makes some GREAT hardware, but I have found their software to be lacking.
On the Winblows side, I like the way that the software looks, works, and feels. But it annoys me to no end that they can't even be bothered to make their internet buttons work properly with FireFox! Grrrrr. It works great with Netscape (or so they claim). And how much extra effort would it take to fix it? 10 or 15 minutes and a quick re-compile?
And if every PC since 1990 has a FPGA in it, we would be stuck with backward-compatability problems. "I have the new Vertex 2 Pro. Too bad it can't run my game, which requires an original Vertex."
This is a major problem. A modern processor can abstract away many of the complexities of its design. The ISA just has to run, and the processor can handle the details of how this happens. With an FPGA, you are down-n-dirty with the hardware. Any architectural changes have an major impact on how you handle the device.
If you want software to take advantage of a FPGA, then you have to have a standard. Let's assume that an FPGA is chosen as the "standard." Here are the consequences:
1) You now have one vendor -- who can arbitrarily set their own prices. FPGAs have a lot of IP in them, so one manufacturer cannot simply copy another's design.
2) Upgrading would be very difficult, because you would loose backwards-compatability.
3) How do you handle multi-tasking? What if you have two programs running - both of which need the FPGA?
4) Bad code. It is easy to imagine a scan chain sending one "one" followed by a bunch of zeros. Then, tie all of the drivers to the same global net. Every clock tick = a blown transistor! Fun task for a virus writer!
I am not saying that having an FPGA is a bad idea, but you need to think long and hard before you do this. You would need some sort of API for the FPGA. Obviously, hard-coding for one FPGA will not work. We need flexibility. So, we need to be able to compile for an EDIF, with the ability to use cores. And going through this process once can take HOURS on even the fastest of machines. "Thank you for installing Photoshop 2008. We are now going to prepare the FPGA programming. Please wait 12 hours." This would only need to be done once per machine, but would still be a pain in the rear.
I can see that the FPGA is needed in certain circumstances, but I doubt that it is a good general-purpose device.
Slashdot Mirror
The funny thing is that, if real, this is most likely a worthless patent. The patent will likely expire long before something like this is even possible.
Sort of like patenting an idea for making money by mining hydrogen gas from stars in a distant galaxy.
Perhaps. but the parent of your post has a BIG point... The "lowest common denominator" is NOT going to run HL2 or Doom3. That $299 e-machines won't have the graphical cajones. Neither will that top-of-the-line gaming system from four years ago. It takes a modern system to be able to run modern FPS. Modern systems have DVD drives. Period.
Nope. Things like this just take any signals that they are given. The person controlling the thing has to learn how to control it.
Babies thrash their limbs around for a while. It takes them a couple of months to learn to even grasp at an object.
So the chip "figures out" absolutely nothing. The brain learns to "figure out" the chip.
Exactly what I was thinking. I want a 3rd (and possibly 4th) arm. THAT would be cool. Especially if one had a laer on it! Come to think of it, I could use it to control a shark - with a laser on it's head!
:(
But, on a more practical side... This process is obviously far from perfect. If the whole thing went crazy, the worst thing would be having your TV stuck on the spanish channel at full blast
On the other hand, with a robot arm, some serious bodily injury could occur. Even a weak arm could have enough strength to poke your eye out. If somebody was using their fancy arm to slice a tomato, one slip could prove fatal.
Still, I suspect that this will be eventually done if this technique works. But it will take time, lots of legal waivers, and a lot of insurance.
Of course, this assumes that you do NOT pay by the byte (as you might on a mobile phone). For a modem connection, it is OK. Also, it assumes that you have nothing going on in the background. If all you have running is Firefox, this is a good thing. On the other hand, if you have a torrent running in the background, then Firefox gets faster at the expense of the torrent.
What ^^^ he said.
But here is an idea. If you can find some really good old UPSs off of ebay for cheap with dead batteries, then you can probably scavenge just the electronics off of them. The batteries are very heavy, and expensive to lug/ship. They are also usually the first items to die in any UPS (well, that and fans).
When you get there, build some wood cabinets, install the board that you brought with you, and hook the whole thing up to a car battery.
The electronics determine the maximum amount of equipment that you can hang off of the UPS. The battery determines how long it will last. So if you chain a couple of car batteries together in parallel, you might be able to get a couple of hours of run time.
A UPS uses gell-cell batteries, but the voltages and chemistries are similar enough that you should be able to use a car battery (but this only works if the UPS uses 12V batteries). Note that car batteries are not intended to be deep-cycled (marine batteries are better for that), but sometimes you are forced to improvise when facing difficult circumstances. Also, if you use a battery that is a whole lot larger than the original, the UPS may take a very long time to recharge it.
Of course, this assumes that car batteries are available. If this is not the case, then please ignore me.
Welll, you COULD stop people from transmitting with a large chain link fence. If you fence off the entire area within 1 mile, you can be sure that nobody will transmit within 1 mile...
OK. With that sarcastic answer out of the way, the parent is completely correct. You CANNOT keep other people from transmitting on your frequency. But what you CAN do it know if the received signal is from the desired source by using cryptography (assuming that your information is digital). Of course, jamming is still a problem, and the only three ways around that that I know of are: 1) more power, 2) Better antennas, 3) spread spectrum. None of them are fool-proof.
On the other hand, if your source is analog (voice, for example), then your choices are now very limited. The only way that I can think of is to use spread-specturm, where the specific frequency-hopping scheme is the secret key. Note that this is NOT the sort of things that you try unless you really know what you are doing. To go from zero knowledge to working spread spectrum on your own is impossible. Another solution is to convert the analog to digital, and then you can use any cryptographic solution that you want.
As others have posted, you could use a highly directional antenna. This does not make it impossible for others to transmit. It just means that they have to move to a different location, or they have to pump up the power.
I cannot see a 3rd party releasing a UMD-R drive anytime soon, and Sony WON'T be the first. In this case, there will be no "them" to beat.
And how is that significant? At a local game store, I tried out the new Metroid title. You have to tap the screen to shoot? And how is that an improvement over a simple button?
I can see a touch-screen being useful in a FEW circumstances. But it sounds like a solution in search of a problem. And game makers have to make SOME use of the touch screen just because it's there -- even if it makes no sense. I invoke the wookie defence now.
Note that I am not a Nintendo basher. The only game machines that I own is a GameCube and a GBA (well, and my PC and the commodore-64 stick).
Perhaps. But you should still have one copy of M$ office. Before sending files to other people, it might be nice to be able to check the "benchmark" just to verify that your formatting survived. OO does a good job of reading/writing M$ formats. But I have seen cases where the margins and spacing are just different enough to turn a one-page document into a two-page one. For most applications, they are close enough. But I can easily image a few cases where the exact formatting matters.
But that has never stoped any cosmologists.
And I was not presenting rigorous scientific truth. Just something to think about...
Actually, current creationist belief goes something like this:
Dinosaurs are really big lizards.
Dragons, as described in legends, are really big lizards.
Dragons=dinosaurs.
In fact, in the book of Job, a beast (behemoth) is partially described which could fit a brontosaurus. On fact, no land mammal fits this description, but a dinosaur would. The bible also mentions in a few other places things which could fit the dinosaur/dragon mold.
Things to make you go "Hmmmmm."
I switched over to FireFox a long time ago. I still encounter software that launches IE whenever you click on "help." Very annoying. I know which browser I want to use, I just wish that ALL software would respect that choice.
Yes, they are. Note that I am NOT in any way, shape, or form, an office expert.
;)
But, AFAIK, to get new toolbars to pop up, you have to copy files to the hard drive. If somebody else already has the ability to copy stuff to the hard drive, then you have worse things to worry about than Office toolbars.
It is sort of like Fort Knox worrying that somebody might break in and steal office supplies
It works for me! You have to think of .PDF as being a form of "electronic paper".
;)
A complete noob trying to save his spreadsheet might be a bit annoyed if he tried the new "acrobat" spreadsheet format, just to find all of his formulas blown away
So having it as a "print" option makes more sense than a "save" option.
By not choosing, you have made a choice, and that choice is "infinite."
So, I can choose 500 as a good number, but you would say that 2,000 would be better. Who is right? I don't know, but I do know that if I chose 500, then I would be a lot happier with 2,000 than with infinite.
Limits should be set substantially higher than what a normal user will ever need. A normal user should never even bump into the limits.
Now, if you ARE a power user, then you should know how to change those limits. This gives you the best of all possible worlds. You get protection, but you can CHANGE THE DEFAULTS if you need to! Simple. If you are setting up apache, you should know enough about it to set reasonable limits.
Let me put it another way. What would you think if I said "ZoneAlarm doesn't know what ports I need open. It should open up ALL ports by default. I will shut down the ones that I don't need." That would be a pretty useless firewall.
There was already one video game crash in the early 80's. I wonder how much the current situation looks like the one back then? The "Great Game Crash of 2006?" Maybe!
I finally picked up a GameCube for my children last weekend - my first console since the original PS. I snagged a deal at Worst Buy of two classic games for $25. If all games were $50, then I would not have purchased anything! Lower prices make me buy more! I like to buy when I can get a deal. I do NOT buy when I feel like I am being ripped off. It is not just about price, it is also about perceptions.
How many people who have optical audio speakers have been annoyed when their DVDs would not play any sound, due to a stupid and short-sighted copy protection scheme? I would happily pay $20 or $30 more to go completely optical, but having a stupid limitation like that totally breaks the deal.
Here are the questions that I ask about new tech:
1) What can it allow me to do that I cannot do now?
2) What will it stop me from doing that I can do now? Some very old VCRs completely ignore macrovision, so older tech is sometimes the best.
3) How much does it cost?
But you are absolutely right about "outstripping our ability to care," but I also think that it is also outstripping our ability to afford it too. I would love to have a nice HD setup with surround sound. HD is too expensive right now. Plus, I do not watch much television in the first place. Would I take it for $100? Sure! Would I pay $500 for the honor of having HD? Nope. Not worth it.
And surround sound is out because I would have to somehow get a half-dozen speakers mounted to walls and ceilings, and run all sorts of ugly wires. Two speakers are easy - on either side of the TV. Six speakers only work for people who have one entire room dedicated to the television. So, this is not a factor of money, but one of convenience. Surround sound would be cool, but is not necessary.
What is this "floppy drive" of which you speak?
Logitech makes some GREAT hardware, but I have found their software to be lacking.
On the Winblows side, I like the way that the software looks, works, and feels. But it annoys me to no end that they can't even be bothered to make their internet buttons work properly with FireFox! Grrrrr. It works great with Netscape (or so they claim). And how much extra effort would it take to fix it? 10 or 15 minutes and a quick re-compile?
How are Kensinton drivers?
And if every PC since 1990 has a FPGA in it, we would be stuck with backward-compatability problems. "I have the new Vertex 2 Pro. Too bad it can't run my game, which requires an original Vertex."
This is a major problem. A modern processor can abstract away many of the complexities of its design. The ISA just has to run, and the processor can handle the details of how this happens. With an FPGA, you are down-n-dirty with the hardware. Any architectural changes have an major impact on how you handle the device.
If you want software to take advantage of a FPGA, then you have to have a standard. Let's assume that an FPGA is chosen as the "standard." Here are the consequences:
1) You now have one vendor -- who can arbitrarily set their own prices. FPGAs have a lot of IP in them, so one manufacturer cannot simply copy another's design.
2) Upgrading would be very difficult, because you would loose backwards-compatability.
3) How do you handle multi-tasking? What if you have two programs running - both of which need the FPGA?
4) Bad code. It is easy to imagine a scan chain sending one "one" followed by a bunch of zeros. Then, tie all of the drivers to the same global net. Every clock tick = a blown transistor! Fun task for a virus writer!
I am not saying that having an FPGA is a bad idea, but you need to think long and hard before you do this. You would need some sort of API for the FPGA. Obviously, hard-coding for one FPGA will not work. We need flexibility. So, we need to be able to compile for an EDIF, with the ability to use cores. And going through this process once can take HOURS on even the fastest of machines. "Thank you for installing Photoshop 2008. We are now going to prepare the FPGA programming. Please wait 12 hours." This would only need to be done once per machine, but would still be a pain in the rear.
I can see that the FPGA is needed in certain circumstances, but I doubt that it is a good general-purpose device.