I keep cats out of the computer room because they have an almost uncontrollable urge to pee on the monitor, keyboard, and CPU.
Cat pee is extremely corrosive. One spray sucked up by the system would probably ruin it. ( remember, the fan exhausts air, so any contaminant sprayed around the case is going to go IN. )
I find it scary when one incurs charges by just a quickie phone call. They have their script all rehearsed and phrased where they can blurt out so called binding agreements, and we are "socially expected" to be polite and give a "timely" response, like on the order of seconds.
What scares me is businesses are arranging with banks on direct account withdrawals, and checking account numbers are pretty easy to come by. I mean, if you have ever paid something by check, they have it. And now, they do not even need a signed check to get withdrawal. So you could see charges showing up on your checking account that you have no idea what is.
And dealing with a business is kinda scary, because they have links to Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. They can mess up your credit and then you have to straighten that out too. You might as well pay them their money just not to have to argue about it. I mean, like me - if I get my credit all screwed up over some business that slipped a charge on me for some "professional services listing" and I refused to pay, I might be denied a job because of that stain. And they know this.
So, I try to keep any monthly billing I have to as few of entities as possible. Once a company has legitimate billing access, they have a foot in the door that a telemarketer can use to fool me into thinking I am doing business with somebody I am already doing business with... like the way they bamboozled the guy with the trick 4-in-one question that if he said "yes" ( which was the obvious answer to three of the questions - if the name, address, and number was correct ), he implies acceptance of the quickly stated fourth question - that he is authorized to modify his billing.
With a business model out now that depends on signing up monthly billing, I see the opportunity for scamming artists soaring, as the number of open accounts, ripe for modification, soars.
I continue all attempts to make purchases on a per-instance basis, meaning I pay full price for the product and close the sale, leaving no loose ends. None of this "support", "warranty", "revolving charge account", etc. I walk out the door with the product, and the vendor has been paid in full. That way things don't change after the agreement has been made.
I have done way too much business already with businesses ( especially insurance companies, and any company having anything to do with investments ) that love to send me tons of paper describing changes after I have agreed to something.
Damm, I just don't have time to read it all. I really *hate* to do business under that business model.
This is the thing that had me so worked up over the Lexmark Printer thing ( where Static Control Concepts tried to make an aftermarket replacement toner cartridge but ran afoul of DMCA because Lexmark put a chip in the toner cartridge, and SCC could not legally duplicate the chip. ). Once this paradigm catches on in the business community, I fear we will see the end of going to WalMart to get replacement aftermarket goods for our day-to-day expendables. Companies could demand and get agreements for monthly billings, and once that's in place, the door is wide open for rampant trickery to modify those agreements.
If one has this information and wants to see a spammer harassed, here's somebody whose mad too and may have some tools to make some hurt.
Kinda like if a lawyer who has been angered at being awoken in the middle of the night by helicopters and lets it be known that he has placed a bounty on those running those helicopters. If you are getting woke up at night with those things and know whose doing it, you probably wanna give that lawyer a call and share the info. Who gives a damm about the money? Its peace at night which is the real goal.
Kinda funny, thats how the College gets all the sulfated batteries... all the little "golf carts" running about campus.
They send them over to the auto department for maintenance. The college could sure use some help, and I need data for statistical analysis. But I have no intention to buy all sorts of test beds when the college has all these carts in service. I'll slip a little data logger in the charger design and find out if pulsing does any good, what amps, repetition rate, float voltages, temperatures, etc. may correlate with sulfation. It will probably be several years before I get any good data out of it. Hopefully, I will get other paid work from others who need research down this line, as I am trying to put together a program where we all can win - as the college could sure use support, I need to eat, and others out there may save costs ( and environmental concerns ) by extending the life of their batteries. I am quite happy to do the research if I can get funded to do so, because as an environmentalist, I feel this is my way to help save the earth. I am not one of those "do without" type guys, rather I am one of those "lets do it the right way so we don't make a helluva mess" type guys.
The biggest problem I have with this kind of work is selling it. Most concerns seem to think of research like a vending machine... they deposit funding and they want results - now. Sometime it takes me years to get it right. This one is definitely in that category. This quest could use up my remaining life on earth if I can get it funded.
Exactly what I have been doing for ten years now after getting my layoff from aerospace.
I have loved to tinker with stuff ever since I can remember, and once the only tie binding me to an employer ( the retirement plan ) was severed, I did not see much sense in trying to start over with another employer. You know, the two-week vacation after one year, all that new-employee stuff. If they could not take me in at a high level commensurate with my experience, its just not worth it. I have all the tools I need, and I know how to use them. A good fiddler can make really nice music out of a five dollar fiddle, whereas a novice fiddler, even given a several thousand dollar fiddle, can't compete. Although
none of my tools are very expensive ( most are free ) the trick is I have them and I know how to use them.
I work from home, design and build prototypes, design circuits, PCB layout, etc. My last job involved a lot of magnetics and switchmode power supply design for direct control of motors. I am now doing research on lead-acid battery desulfators. They are very similar to switchmode power supplies - but they kick the power back into the battery. Its the pulses that seem to rejuvenate the battery plates. But I am going to find out if this is real or just hype. I will probably end up building several desulfators then bring them down to the local college's auto department and start collecting data on their store of sulfated batteries.
I do a lot of wiring, soldering, very limited machining, and a lot of CAD design and internet research.
Rule #1: Remember you are in a residential neighborhood. You are NOT free to make industrial noises, fumes, eyesores, traffic, or other business related nuisances. There is a place for that, and its not in the neighborhood.
I go meet clients at their place. Only very rarely do they ever come to my home to see what I am doing, mainly I invite them over so they can see my workshop and tools I use so they know I am serious. But I make it clear I work out of my house not only to keep costs low, but also that I absolutely hate commuting and having to keep up two places instead of just one. I consider eacn hour commuting as 10% of my useful day down the toilet.
I don't know of any more rules, or at least nobody has ever approached me with any.
My neighbors who know of my activity say they approve, cause having people in the neighborhood during the day keeps the crime rate down - as I often stroll through the neighborhood during the day for lunch or local errands ( why fire up the car for a 2 mile trip when I sorely need the exercise?) and the granny across the street loves it because of the comfort of knowing there is someone close by if she has an emergency.
And how does the independent artist get his name out there? Mostly by word of mouth and hopefully some positive reviews.
Maybe its about time to restart Internet Radio and make a client where it is very easy to change "stations".. indy artists can fire up their own stations and link to others, much as web pages are done now.. and being it is their own stuff ( or stuff they have explicit permission to broadcast ), the **AA probably can't do nothing much about it, like imposing all sorts of recordkeeping and the like. Of course, the artists would know they are in this for exposure.
I am not really up on this stuff here so I may be quite a bit redundant here, but ever since all this hubbub about equating listening to music as being theft, I have not expended much energy anymore trying the new stuff. I can't name any artists that came to be last year, or technologies to listen to them. If RIAA's goal was to make me as cognizant of artists as I am on baseball scores played on another planet, they succeeded.
At the music industry end.. while you are sending, mix in an extremely low-level white noise.. so that maybe statistically you may alter the least significant bit maybe 0.01 % of the time.
Then take an MD5 or equivalent hash of the file sent. That hash becomes part of the purchase record.
If they run across another music file of the same hash, they have a pretty good idea who's leaking.
Maybe this is a troll or flamebait, but I have been seeing all this flurry of patenting and the generation of untold amounts of litigatables for some time now and its getting scary. Although this is great news for those who deal in litigatables, it is really bad news for those of us in the trenches trying to get something done ( i.e. product to market ).
Note how things seem to change abruptly when things get bad enough.
Remember when the Standard Oil Company had a stranglehold on anything to do with petroleum? Then one day, BAM!
The Bell System had just about monopoly on anththing telephonic? You could not even put an extention phone in, despite fully agreeing to pay for any use of the line?
I get the idea we just sit back and let the USA paralyze themselves. While we spend our resources having all sorts of petty arguments, the rest of the world will go on.
Its all about economics.
Its what did USSR in. It can do the USA in too.
Once our government realizes we are seriously losing our capability of supporting ourselves, they will start paying attention. Once another world power ( probably China ) becomes strong enough that they could take control, where we could not do anything about it if they did, we will see action. Of course, by then, it will be too late. Especially if that new power sees no logic in recognizing the lifestyles or property of those here who don't produce anything. Kinda like we don't recognize any power or property of the Iraqi ex-powers-that-was. They may have been billionaires, now they are just bobbling heads hocking up words. While the new powers-that-be not only ignore them, but may even consider them a pest that needs to be exterminated. I mean, who do you think will be needed in the country, a wealthy landowner, or someone who can make the water pump work?
Remember how our Government actually encouraged youth to go into the sciences during the cold war? I think when the time comes where we really need to get our nose back to the wheel and start doing something, legislation will be passed to "clear the clutter" so things can happen.
Until then, its gonna be the same ol, same ol. The big kids get to the playground, call dibs on everything that can be played with, then rest on their big butts collecting extortion from anyone who tries to play with anything.
Yeh, I know what you mean. I have all LCD monitors now because I found the flicker of CRT based things extremely annoying and I could not pay attention to one for more than a few minutes at a time before I encounter quite a headache.
I had a helluva time in the early days when monochrome monitors were all the rage. Although I loved the graphical display the things provided, the frequency of their horizontal drive would literally drive me up the wall. Where I used to work in aerospace, I kept a large bottle of aspirin to ward off the effects of the horizontal output transformer. It was almost like working next to steam venting through a whistle. Loud - only one frequency - and piercing. ( I no longer work in aerospace. )
TV is out of the question. I went to some extremes to find a set that did not emit a strong 15KHz audio ( magnetostriction in the horizontal flyback/high voltage transformer ) as well as the flicker. I am a bit sensitive to it. Kinda like a terribly small rock-in-the-shoe can cause me significant discomfort.
I now watch TV over a LCD, and for me, its much better. At least the high-voltage circuits powering the backlights run at a much higher frequency than I can hear. That 15 KHz would bear down on me like someone probing me with a pin. Except not on me but in my ear.
One thing I think this encryption technology is going to have to deal with is that the installed base of display devices, unlike specialized projectors, has a fixed refresh rate, and very difficult to change. You can not dither the refresh rate and compensate with brightness. This may be useful to hold off "cinema versions" but I highly feel that this technology is not viable for holding off, say, DVD ripping.
Also, they do not seem to be passing this off to the general public, of which some will have sensitivity to it, as do I.
Although I am not familiar with the hardware innards of one of these digitizers, I would hazard a guess they are using this topology. Its quite accurate, very simple to implement, and uses little power.
Uh huh.. this whole thing is about restricting rights of some to benefit others.
Personally, I would be delighted if they stopped wasting time on rights-restriction regulation such as spam and DMCA. The whole affair just makes litigatables and uselessly diverts our resources to squabbling. This whole patent thing is out of control. Imagine if you held a patent on screws under today's legislation. How much could you hang up the works while the rest of the world went on.
We have far more constructive uses of our time and energy. Days spent in courtrooms don't produce anything. Leave the system alone and it will correct itself. Intelligent filters will evolve to "pre-read" the incoming mail and categorize it appropriately, and the media will adapt to use the technology's vast distribution capabilities to its advantage.
As a society, we are killing ourselves economically in order to protect intellectual property monopolies, so that a very few can benefit. We need to return to what worked. I question all this new legislation. We condemn Saddam Hussein because of his treatment of his people, yet we wield 90 Billion dollar lawsuits against students.. err-- isn't that damn near the equivalent of killing them without killing them?
You don't rev up the economic engine by stomping hard on tne brakes.
I think you hit the nail on the head there, Gator.
I bought my Panasonic Laser Partner KX-P4450 back around 1990. Its been working great. Prints on plain old copy paper ( cheap : 99cents/ream(500 sheets) at Fry's when they put it on sale ). Toner - cheap at around $20/bottle, which is good for several reams of paper. The rest of the stuff in the printer slowly degrades, but over the last 10 years, I have only had to replace the drum, which came in at about $150.
$150!! I spent $150 for a Drum??? Yes! I know, I spent more for that drum than I could have spent for a whole new printer! I know that. But I really do like this old laser machine. Hardly ever jams. Makes nice prints. Its only drawback is that it does draw a lot of power ( keeping the fuser hot ), so I only power it up when there's printing to be done.
I spent right at $2,000 to get the printer in the first place. But then, I wanted a printer done right... not some cheap pile of stuff I can't depend on when I need it. Otherwise, I would be in the same boat a lot of people here are posting over. I bought that printer the same time I bought my brand spanking new AST-Premium 286. The printer is still with me. The AST is long since gone. ( It had proprietary innards and I could not economically maintain it, although I still have several 286 still in service.... that's how I learned my lesson in proprietary stuff... the lesson cost me about $1000, which is the price difference between the AST and what a generic machine would run me. The generics are still in service. )
Business will provide what sells. If you focus on price and are willing to accept junk, that's what you will get.
Price for me is a consideration, but I consider much more than out-the-door price when evaluating a purchase. I have been known to pay an order of magnitude, sometimes even more, if I know what I am getting is good stuff. Don't get me wrong - I will pay very little for "bragging rights"... when I pay more, there's a reason... usually things like having it extremely maintainable, using generic parts, or maybe extremely energy efficient. A car designed for easy maintainance to me is worth far more than a car designed to visually impress someone. Show me a car where I can't work on the engine, and I will show you a car that I may look at, but leave it in the showroom. Want to turn me off fast? Tell me it has all these extended engine codes, but don't share them with me. You might as well be trying to coax me to live in a gilded cage. I don't care if it is gold, it is a cage!
Business does have a tendency to provide what the customer will pay for. It's up to us to guide business on what to provide. Putting our little dollar-sign blinders on doesn't help much. There is so much more to something than the out-the-door price.
I really see only one thing fundamentally wrong with this concept. And its psychological, not technical.
On the very first instance of network enabled appliances I have had exposure to, the humble VCR, the first thing it does is want to phone home to get permission to do anything.
I can only imagine having monthly bills arriving in my mailbox for every appliance I have.. washing machine, dryer, refrigerator, etc. And any attempt I make of divorcing them from the net would be considered criminal.
I wish I had some mod points now, but lacking any, I'll just reply, but FWIW, I would have modded this "informative". I appreciate the trouble you went through to embed the links.
No.. its not the porn - that's easily replaceable.
What I am trying to do is air a word of caution about building anything *serious* around a proprietary format, as it, like anything else you don't have control over, can potentially be used as a tool of extortion to force you into doing someone else's wishes. Possibly very much against your will. But being between a rock and a legal team, you don't have much of a choice.
The path to take is best chosen at the time of construction, before you have legacy to support.
Those who choose the wrong path have the option of doing whatever it takes to stay on it, or the expense of doing the whole thing over.
I see nothing wrong with using someone else's stuff, but, like a rented house or tools borrowed from a neighbor, I can't design anything serious around it. Just use it while you have it, knowing all along you may not have it tomorrow.
This is the reason I am really leery of anything to do with Microsoft.
You know the flap about whether or not you can use.GIF or.JPG ? Apparently, the protocols are copyrighted and "permission to use" can be yanked at any time?
I am very afraid of incorporating anything I do not have clear access to in any business system I have anything to do with.
Just as that student got hit with some 90 Billion fine, I just do not trust anything proprietary, kinda like I do not trust the concept of building anything I have to have to survive in a rented building.
I have seen by now how people think... like the RIAA that has that student over a 90 billion dollar barrel. If I have to design something and control freaks are involved, I give them plenty of knobs, but I do not connect them to anything of any importance.
Ummm. Its Sunday Morning. Who's around to talk to?
So CmdrTaco picks a sleepy Sunday Morning to/. a site. Well, it is disseminating information to individuals; each had to click on it to get it. All CmdrTaco did was to bring the link into public view. Kinda the same thing businesses pay advertising agencies big bux for. If the site admin does not want the publicity, no biggie, but blame CmdrTaco for it?? nah. Not in my book. Not at all.
Its well known in the/. community that/. is extremely current; that is that things often get on the system within hours, if not minutes, of its occurrence, often beating out other well-known news agencies, as the very people involved in making the news are often/.'ers themselves.
Well, its a public site. The sysadmin has the option of closing his site if he's getting far more traffic than he wants. No biggie. Just bookmark the site and visit later when the hordes are gone. Sports venues do this all the time when traffic exceeds capacity. Its called "sold out".
You usually put stuff on the net if you want to expose it publically. I think CmdrTaco did them a service by exposing it to/.'ers. I can not find/.'ing a site any more offensive than storming a Burger King with several busloads of kids during a summer outing. ( Yes, I've done that. )
I remember a few years ago when a shopkeeper shot a young girl for stealing some ( I think it was ) orange juice from a store in Los Angeles.
Yes, she was stealing.
The store owner did not look too good after the episode, even though, technically, he probably thought he was in the right.
I think that is why we have gun control laws.
This may be a really good example of the bad stuff that can happen when draconian law, like the DMCA, is passed.
It may be high time to do some research on those who signed this legislation into law and ask them what they are going to do about it before the next election rolls around and everyone dons those little styrofoam "vote hats", and strut around exhorting how they are "fighting" for us.
I think this is an excellent reason why the DMCA should be repealed, in its entirety.
If AOL is forced to make IM interoperable, others may have problems defending proprietary protocols too.. like later versions of Office being deliberately designed to be inoperable with Linux.
True, but in the process of cooling it back down after reaction, you can use that heat to warm up the incoming stream.
Consider two concentric ( one inside the other ) pipes. Maybe 100 feet long or so. Cool product is coming in the center pipe at 80 deg F at the left end , its leaving at 500 deg F at the right end, while at the same time, hot product from the reaction tank is entering the right end of the outer pipe at 500 deg F and leaving the left end at 80 deg F. You have this whole thing thermally insulated. Only the inside pipe and the outside pipe are thermally connected. The product flows in opposite directions in each pipe, so that the hottest product leaving the reactor warms the hottest incoming product. So you end up using the "waste heat" of outgoing product to heat the incoming product. Just insulate it well and its quite efficient.
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Cat pee is extremely corrosive. One spray sucked up by the system would probably ruin it. ( remember, the fan exhausts air, so any contaminant sprayed around the case is going to go IN. )
What scares me is businesses are arranging with banks on direct account withdrawals, and checking account numbers are pretty easy to come by. I mean, if you have ever paid something by check, they have it. And now, they do not even need a signed check to get withdrawal. So you could see charges showing up on your checking account that you have no idea what is.
And dealing with a business is kinda scary, because they have links to Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. They can mess up your credit and then you have to straighten that out too. You might as well pay them their money just not to have to argue about it. I mean, like me - if I get my credit all screwed up over some business that slipped a charge on me for some "professional services listing" and I refused to pay, I might be denied a job because of that stain. And they know this.
So, I try to keep any monthly billing I have to as few of entities as possible. Once a company has legitimate billing access, they have a foot in the door that a telemarketer can use to fool me into thinking I am doing business with somebody I am already doing business with... like the way they bamboozled the guy with the trick 4-in-one question that if he said "yes" ( which was the obvious answer to three of the questions - if the name, address, and number was correct ), he implies acceptance of the quickly stated fourth question - that he is authorized to modify his billing.
With a business model out now that depends on signing up monthly billing, I see the opportunity for scamming artists soaring, as the number of open accounts, ripe for modification, soars.
I continue all attempts to make purchases on a per-instance basis, meaning I pay full price for the product and close the sale, leaving no loose ends. None of this "support", "warranty", "revolving charge account", etc. I walk out the door with the product, and the vendor has been paid in full. That way things don't change after the agreement has been made.
I have done way too much business already with businesses ( especially insurance companies, and any company having anything to do with investments ) that love to send me tons of paper describing changes after I have agreed to something.
Damm, I just don't have time to read it all. I really *hate* to do business under that business model.
This is the thing that had me so worked up over the Lexmark Printer thing ( where Static Control Concepts tried to make an aftermarket replacement toner cartridge but ran afoul of DMCA because Lexmark put a chip in the toner cartridge, and SCC could not legally duplicate the chip. ). Once this paradigm catches on in the business community, I fear we will see the end of going to WalMart to get replacement aftermarket goods for our day-to-day expendables. Companies could demand and get agreements for monthly billings, and once that's in place, the door is wide open for rampant trickery to modify those agreements.
He's made his intention clear.
If one has this information and wants to see a spammer harassed, here's somebody whose mad too and may have some tools to make some hurt.
Kinda like if a lawyer who has been angered at being awoken in the middle of the night by helicopters and lets it be known that he has placed a bounty on those running those helicopters. If you are getting woke up at night with those things and know whose doing it, you probably wanna give that lawyer a call and share the info. Who gives a damm about the money? Its peace at night which is the real goal.
Kinda funny, thats how the College gets all the sulfated batteries... all the little "golf carts" running about campus.
They send them over to the auto department for maintenance. The college could sure use some help, and I need data for statistical analysis. But I have no intention to buy all sorts of test beds when the college has all these carts in service. I'll slip a little data logger in the charger design and find out if pulsing does any good, what amps, repetition rate, float voltages, temperatures, etc. may correlate with sulfation. It will probably be several years before I get any good data out of it. Hopefully, I will get other paid work from others who need research down this line, as I am trying to put together a program where we all can win - as the college could sure use support, I need to eat, and others out there may save costs ( and environmental concerns ) by extending the life of their batteries. I am quite happy to do the research if I can get funded to do so, because as an environmentalist, I feel this is my way to help save the earth. I am not one of those "do without" type guys, rather I am one of those "lets do it the right way so we don't make a helluva mess" type guys.
The biggest problem I have with this kind of work is selling it. Most concerns seem to think of research like a vending machine... they deposit funding and they want results - now. Sometime it takes me years to get it right. This one is definitely in that category. This quest could use up my remaining life on earth if I can get it funded.
I have loved to tinker with stuff ever since I can remember, and once the only tie binding me to an employer ( the retirement plan ) was severed, I did not see much sense in trying to start over with another employer. You know, the two-week vacation after one year, all that new-employee stuff. If they could not take me in at a high level commensurate with my experience, its just not worth it. I have all the tools I need, and I know how to use them. A good fiddler can make really nice music out of a five dollar fiddle, whereas a novice fiddler, even given a several thousand dollar fiddle, can't compete. Although none of my tools are very expensive ( most are free ) the trick is I have them and I know how to use them.
I work from home, design and build prototypes, design circuits, PCB layout, etc. My last job involved a lot of magnetics and switchmode power supply design for direct control of motors. I am now doing research on lead-acid battery desulfators. They are very similar to switchmode power supplies - but they kick the power back into the battery. Its the pulses that seem to rejuvenate the battery plates. But I am going to find out if this is real or just hype. I will probably end up building several desulfators then bring them down to the local college's auto department and start collecting data on their store of sulfated batteries.
I do a lot of wiring, soldering, very limited machining, and a lot of CAD design and internet research.
Rule #1: Remember you are in a residential neighborhood. You are NOT free to make industrial noises, fumes, eyesores, traffic, or other business related nuisances. There is a place for that, and its not in the neighborhood.
I go meet clients at their place. Only very rarely do they ever come to my home to see what I am doing, mainly I invite them over so they can see my workshop and tools I use so they know I am serious. But I make it clear I work out of my house not only to keep costs low, but also that I absolutely hate commuting and having to keep up two places instead of just one. I consider eacn hour commuting as 10% of my useful day down the toilet.
I don't know of any more rules, or at least nobody has ever approached me with any.
My neighbors who know of my activity say they approve, cause having people in the neighborhood during the day keeps the crime rate down - as I often stroll through the neighborhood during the day for lunch or local errands ( why fire up the car for a 2 mile trip when I sorely need the exercise?) and the granny across the street loves it because of the comfort of knowing there is someone close by if she has an emergency.
Maybe its about time to restart Internet Radio and make a client where it is very easy to change "stations".. indy artists can fire up their own stations and link to others, much as web pages are done now.. and being it is their own stuff ( or stuff they have explicit permission to broadcast ), the **AA probably can't do nothing much about it, like imposing all sorts of recordkeeping and the like. Of course, the artists would know they are in this for exposure.
I am not really up on this stuff here so I may be quite a bit redundant here, but ever since all this hubbub about equating listening to music as being theft, I have not expended much energy anymore trying the new stuff. I can't name any artists that came to be last year, or technologies to listen to them. If RIAA's goal was to make me as cognizant of artists as I am on baseball scores played on another planet, they succeeded.
Then take an MD5 or equivalent hash of the file sent. That hash becomes part of the purchase record.
If they run across another music file of the same hash, they have a pretty good idea who's leaking.
Get several together, you probably have a case.
Note how things seem to change abruptly when things get bad enough.
Remember when the Standard Oil Company had a stranglehold on anything to do with petroleum? Then one day, BAM!
The Bell System had just about monopoly on anththing telephonic? You could not even put an extention phone in, despite fully agreeing to pay for any use of the line?
I get the idea we just sit back and let the USA paralyze themselves. While we spend our resources having all sorts of petty arguments, the rest of the world will go on.
Its all about economics.
Its what did USSR in. It can do the USA in too.
Once our government realizes we are seriously losing our capability of supporting ourselves, they will start paying attention. Once another world power ( probably China ) becomes strong enough that they could take control, where we could not do anything about it if they did, we will see action. Of course, by then, it will be too late. Especially if that new power sees no logic in recognizing the lifestyles or property of those here who don't produce anything. Kinda like we don't recognize any power or property of the Iraqi ex-powers-that-was. They may have been billionaires, now they are just bobbling heads hocking up words. While the new powers-that-be not only ignore them, but may even consider them a pest that needs to be exterminated. I mean, who do you think will be needed in the country, a wealthy landowner, or someone who can make the water pump work?
Remember how our Government actually encouraged youth to go into the sciences during the cold war? I think when the time comes where we really need to get our nose back to the wheel and start doing something, legislation will be passed to "clear the clutter" so things can happen.
Until then, its gonna be the same ol, same ol. The big kids get to the playground, call dibs on everything that can be played with, then rest on their big butts collecting extortion from anyone who tries to play with anything.
I had a helluva time in the early days when monochrome monitors were all the rage. Although I loved the graphical display the things provided, the frequency of their horizontal drive would literally drive me up the wall. Where I used to work in aerospace, I kept a large bottle of aspirin to ward off the effects of the horizontal output transformer. It was almost like working next to steam venting through a whistle. Loud - only one frequency - and piercing. ( I no longer work in aerospace. )
TV is out of the question. I went to some extremes to find a set that did not emit a strong 15KHz audio ( magnetostriction in the horizontal flyback/high voltage transformer ) as well as the flicker. I am a bit sensitive to it. Kinda like a terribly small rock-in-the-shoe can cause me significant discomfort.
I now watch TV over a LCD, and for me, its much better. At least the high-voltage circuits powering the backlights run at a much higher frequency than I can hear. That 15 KHz would bear down on me like someone probing me with a pin. Except not on me but in my ear.
One thing I think this encryption technology is going to have to deal with is that the installed base of display devices, unlike specialized projectors, has a fixed refresh rate, and very difficult to change. You can not dither the refresh rate and compensate with brightness. This may be useful to hold off "cinema versions" but I highly feel that this technology is not viable for holding off, say, DVD ripping.
Also, they do not seem to be passing this off to the general public, of which some will have sensitivity to it, as do I.
See what that kind of thinking led to?
Although I am not familiar with the hardware innards of one of these digitizers, I would hazard a guess they are using this topology. Its quite accurate, very simple to implement, and uses little power.
Personally, I would be delighted if they stopped wasting time on rights-restriction regulation such as spam and DMCA. The whole affair just makes litigatables and uselessly diverts our resources to squabbling. This whole patent thing is out of control. Imagine if you held a patent on screws under today's legislation. How much could you hang up the works while the rest of the world went on.
We have far more constructive uses of our time and energy. Days spent in courtrooms don't produce anything. Leave the system alone and it will correct itself. Intelligent filters will evolve to "pre-read" the incoming mail and categorize it appropriately, and the media will adapt to use the technology's vast distribution capabilities to its advantage.
As a society, we are killing ourselves economically in order to protect intellectual property monopolies, so that a very few can benefit. We need to return to what worked. I question all this new legislation. We condemn Saddam Hussein because of his treatment of his people, yet we wield 90 Billion dollar lawsuits against students.. err-- isn't that damn near the equivalent of killing them without killing them?
You don't rev up the economic engine by stomping hard on tne brakes.
I think the camel's just sticking his nose in the tent.
I bought my Panasonic Laser Partner KX-P4450 back around 1990. Its been working great. Prints on plain old copy paper ( cheap : 99cents/ream(500 sheets) at Fry's when they put it on sale ). Toner - cheap at around $20/bottle, which is good for several reams of paper. The rest of the stuff in the printer slowly degrades, but over the last 10 years, I have only had to replace the drum, which came in at about $150.
$150!! I spent $150 for a Drum??? Yes! I know, I spent more for that drum than I could have spent for a whole new printer! I know that. But I really do like this old laser machine. Hardly ever jams. Makes nice prints. Its only drawback is that it does draw a lot of power ( keeping the fuser hot ), so I only power it up when there's printing to be done.
I spent right at $2,000 to get the printer in the first place. But then, I wanted a printer done right... not some cheap pile of stuff I can't depend on when I need it. Otherwise, I would be in the same boat a lot of people here are posting over. I bought that printer the same time I bought my brand spanking new AST-Premium 286. The printer is still with me. The AST is long since gone. ( It had proprietary innards and I could not economically maintain it, although I still have several 286 still in service.... that's how I learned my lesson in proprietary stuff... the lesson cost me about $1000, which is the price difference between the AST and what a generic machine would run me. The generics are still in service. )
Business will provide what sells. If you focus on price and are willing to accept junk, that's what you will get.
Price for me is a consideration, but I consider much more than out-the-door price when evaluating a purchase. I have been known to pay an order of magnitude, sometimes even more, if I know what I am getting is good stuff. Don't get me wrong - I will pay very little for "bragging rights"... when I pay more, there's a reason... usually things like having it extremely maintainable, using generic parts, or maybe extremely energy efficient. A car designed for easy maintainance to me is worth far more than a car designed to visually impress someone. Show me a car where I can't work on the engine, and I will show you a car that I may look at, but leave it in the showroom. Want to turn me off fast? Tell me it has all these extended engine codes, but don't share them with me. You might as well be trying to coax me to live in a gilded cage. I don't care if it is gold, it is a cage!
Business does have a tendency to provide what the customer will pay for. It's up to us to guide business on what to provide. Putting our little dollar-sign blinders on doesn't help much. There is so much more to something than the out-the-door price.
On the very first instance of network enabled appliances I have had exposure to, the humble VCR, the first thing it does is want to phone home to get permission to do anything.
I can only imagine having monthly bills arriving in my mailbox for every appliance I have.. washing machine, dryer, refrigerator, etc. And any attempt I make of divorcing them from the net would be considered criminal.
I wish I had some mod points now, but lacking any, I'll just reply, but FWIW, I would have modded this "informative". I appreciate the trouble you went through to embed the links.
What I am trying to do is air a word of caution about building anything *serious* around a proprietary format, as it, like anything else you don't have control over, can potentially be used as a tool of extortion to force you into doing someone else's wishes. Possibly very much against your will. But being between a rock and a legal team, you don't have much of a choice.
The path to take is best chosen at the time of construction, before you have legacy to support.
Those who choose the wrong path have the option of doing whatever it takes to stay on it, or the expense of doing the whole thing over.
I see nothing wrong with using someone else's stuff, but, like a rented house or tools borrowed from a neighbor, I can't design anything serious around it. Just use it while you have it, knowing all along you may not have it tomorrow.
You know the flap about whether or not you can use .GIF or .JPG ? Apparently, the protocols are copyrighted and "permission to use" can be yanked at any time?
I am very afraid of incorporating anything I do not have clear access to in any business system I have anything to do with.
Just as that student got hit with some 90 Billion fine, I just do not trust anything proprietary, kinda like I do not trust the concept of building anything I have to have to survive in a rented building.
I have seen by now how people think... like the RIAA that has that student over a 90 billion dollar barrel. If I have to design something and control freaks are involved, I give them plenty of knobs, but I do not connect them to anything of any importance.
GERITOL
So CmdrTaco picks a sleepy Sunday Morning to /. a site. Well, it is disseminating information to individuals; each had to click on it to get it. All CmdrTaco did was to bring the link into public view. Kinda the same thing businesses pay advertising agencies big bux for. If the site admin does not want the publicity, no biggie, but blame CmdrTaco for it?? nah. Not in my book. Not at all.
Its well known in the /. community that /. is extremely current; that is that things often get on the system within hours, if not minutes, of its occurrence, often beating out other well-known news agencies, as the very people involved in making the news are often /.'ers themselves.
Well, its a public site. The sysadmin has the option of closing his site if he's getting far more traffic than he wants. No biggie. Just bookmark the site and visit later when the hordes are gone. Sports venues do this all the time when traffic exceeds capacity. Its called "sold out".
You usually put stuff on the net if you want to expose it publically. I think CmdrTaco did them a service by exposing it to /.'ers. I can not find /.'ing a site any more offensive than storming a Burger King with several busloads of kids during a summer outing. ( Yes, I've done that. )
Yes, she was stealing.
The store owner did not look too good after the episode, even though, technically, he probably thought he was in the right.
I think that is why we have gun control laws.
This may be a really good example of the bad stuff that can happen when draconian law, like the DMCA, is passed.
It may be high time to do some research on those who signed this legislation into law and ask them what they are going to do about it before the next election rolls around and everyone dons those little styrofoam "vote hats", and strut around exhorting how they are "fighting" for us.
I think this is an excellent reason why the DMCA should be repealed, in its entirety.
If AOL is forced to make IM interoperable, others may have problems defending proprietary protocols too.. like later versions of Office being deliberately designed to be inoperable with Linux.
Or file structures ( i.e. .GIF, .JPG. etc. ).
Consider two concentric ( one inside the other ) pipes. Maybe 100 feet long or so. Cool product is coming in the center pipe at 80 deg F at the left end , its leaving at 500 deg F at the right end, while at the same time, hot product from the reaction tank is entering the right end of the outer pipe at 500 deg F and leaving the left end at 80 deg F. You have this whole thing thermally insulated. Only the inside pipe and the outside pipe are thermally connected. The product flows in opposite directions in each pipe, so that the hottest product leaving the reactor warms the hottest incoming product. So you end up using the "waste heat" of outgoing product to heat the incoming product. Just insulate it well and its quite efficient.
In the vernacular, its called a heat exchanger.