In a traditional CRT, there is one beam that is shared with all the pixels. So there can't be any mechanical supports anywhere inside the tube that would interfere with the beam.
In the flat CRT, each pixel has its own beam. This means there can be mechanical support around each and every pixel. It is still 14 pounds per square inch, but a lot fewer square inches per pixel.
Likewise, in a traditional million pixel monitor, each pixel is only on one one millionth of the time. In the flat screen CRT, each pixel is on all the time, so the beam can be one million times weaker, for the same brightness.
With proper care, it can be
as reliable and strong as Oracle and leagues stronger than MySQL or PostgreSQL.
I don't think reliable means what you think it means.
From reading the article it looks like proper care means adding extra checks to detect database corruption. It's a continuing struggle because each release has different bugs.
It's only a research reactor. I imagine they collect the heat to prevent the reactor from getting too hot.
If this were a production reactor, the question should be, is there a more efficient or cost effective method to get the power out than heat+water=turbine-power? I would guess the answer is not yet on the scale needed for a power plant.
Over the years I've learned a lot of different OS's. It took a lot of time. Now I've got Linux everywhere, from my Agenda to my servers. Now I can spend more time writing stuff, and less time learning obscure OS's.
I'm working to make my Agenda talk to my Lego Mindstorms, but other developers are working on usefull stuff.
A lot of food spoils before it gets to the right place. The internet is good for managing logistics. Farmer's markets are interesting places, but they are not the most efficient way to sell a crop.
Information can help farmers improve crop yield and reduce his expenses. Also better manage pesticides and irrigation usage.
A crystal is a moving part. Find something obsolete with a crystal and cut it open. You can see the crystal. It's a piezo electric buzzer that vibrates at whatever the label on the can said, or rather it used to.
There are a bunch of oscillator technologies that don't involve crystals that can be mounted on an MCM. They are either less precise or much more expensive than a crystal.
The ethernet interface needs a precision clock, or it won't work right. So a cheap truly solid state oscillator won't do.
The folks at Red Hat made the same mistake, you can download ISO's from them too. And when they say download the "code", they know what they're talking about.
More great news! I heard on a hacker mailing list, that Debian's stuff isn't protected either.
I snuck into the Debian site, and I got lots of good stuff. Programming tools, games, an OS that works, a couple of desktop environments, networking tools, server apps,... gigabytes of cool stuff. Way more complete than that Microsoft ISO image.
Ignore the XP crap, and grab the good stuff before someone notices.
So what do we store with our CDs to keep the fungus under control that won't hurt the CD?
It also shouldn't hurt us, our pets, or any
stuff commonly stored with CDs.
Or maybe we should coat our CDs with fungus eating bacteria?:-)
Shared library versioning can be made to work, so it's only annoying to have to have multiple versions of a library installed. Some other OS's still haven't figured that out.
Another usefull feature is that shared libraries don't have to be system wide. The system doesn't share libraries based on the name, it's really based on the inode and mount point. So two different libraries can be named libfoo.so.4.2 as long they're in different directories. The user may get confused, but the system won't.
As long as everything has a reasonable license, we our allowed to fix it ourselves.
I assume the Debian package is already done, or will be done shortly. Type apt-get install gnu-cash and let it sort it out.
If you have more than one DIMM, unplug all but one and see what it does to the power draw. If you have bootable media, check the power draw with the disk unplugged.
That will give you interesting numbers that aren't very usefull. Running with less RAM and/or disk isn't progress. but if you do it, post the numbers!
More usefully, go to an overclocking website and reverse the directions. Underclock and see if the difference is significant. Likewise, see if you can spin down idle disks. Report any results, positive or negative!
I've got a machine that's sole purpose in life is to do disk to disk backups of my other systems. Would it be worthwhile to clock it down until it can just barely saturate the ethernet? I've got too many other projects to find out today, but if there's a big win, I'll try.
The machines have multiport serial cards. So divide your time estimate by 8 or 16 for the number of serial ports.
On the other hand,
the numbers don't seem right. 9GB on a machine that old of that class? Maybe it was a really big Basic Four.
Could there be an order of magnitude on the disk size? If they are 9GBytes, that means the drives are relatively modern. Plug them into a less disgusting computer, and reverse engineer the file system.
I'm only somewhat joking. If the computer has a defragment command, it will
simplify the on disk image for easier decoding.
What's the hardware interface on the disk drives?
SMD (You're screwed unless you've a friend who collects obsolete minicomputers), SCSI (life is good), RLL, MFM, ATA/100(oops, wrong universe), etc... If it's from the early 1990's, there may be a similar vintage ISA disk interface for IBM PCs that is still findable on ebay.
It stops working after about a month. That's more than enough time to decide whether you like it, and if you do, to go through the purchase order and whatnot.
I've worked at places where purchase orders could be done quickly. I know companies like that exist. However, in most of the places I've worked, a P.O. takes longer than a month. Sometimes several months.
Likewise, I've always gotten initial keys promptly. Replacement keys after a hardware failure sometimes take much, much longer.
The classic technique is to have the Linux box pretend to be a printer. You'll need to write a program on the Basic4 to generate checksums, and check program on the Linux end.
If it's a serial printer, then you can use all of the serial ports in parallel. It will still takes weeks.
Superconducting cables are smaller than equivalent capacity regular cables. They are also run much cooler. Both aspects allow more stuff to be run
through the same size hole.
The refrigerators that keep the liquid nitrogen liquid make a lot of waste heat, but that heat doesn't end up in the conduit with the cable.
Switch to superconducting wire in an existing tunnel, and there is both more electrical capacity and more space for communication cables.
Why not just tap into one of the repeaters, which convert the optical signal into electronic signals and then back again?
The repeaters are all optical in modern cables. But you're essentially correct anyway. The repeater itself involves a change from regular fiber to doped fiber. A preexisting discontinuity in the fiber to mask the smaller discontinuity added
by the tap. Also the signal is strongest there, so the NSA's tap needs a smaller percentage of the signal.
Based on zero practical experience,
I'm guessing that the tap is done by the scrape and bend method. The bend can be done very slowly
and steadily with a machine. Possibly taking hours or days, so there are no sudden changes to the cable signal.
They must run a fiber from the tap to the shore or a ship. There's no other way for them to get a reasonable volume of secrets from the tap.
The new feature now is that they are going to high volume production. I hope to see another slashdot story in 6 months about hundred dollar laptop batteries.
I don't actually expect to see prices that low this year.
Big companies can arrange for a software escrow agreement. Software escrow agreements can are usually written to kick in when the company stops providing some service. When the agreement kicks in, the escrow company takes the escrowed source code out of the safe and delivers it to the customer's agent.
More importantly, a new license kicks in, so the customer is allowed to use the source code.
Software escrow is expensive, because someone has to pay for auditing the software. The escrow isn't worth much if you're not positive that the source code actually builds the right product.
I've worked at little companies, with big customers, where the big customer demanded source code escrow. I've never been on the other side.
There are many variations. I assume that license keys could also be escrowed.
Re:Why not just build a controller yourself?
on
Agenda VR3 Review
·
· Score: 1
LegOS let's me program the Mindstorms with C and/or assembly, which is way cool. But the Mindstorms don't have nearly as many pixels as a PDA.
I'll let the Mindstorms run the motors and poll the sensors, and the PDA can talk to the outside world. I've got 2 Mindstorms, so I can control 6 motors and read 6 sensors.
The PDA can run a web server for public stuff and ssh for programming.
I wouldn't hand it to just anybody to riffle around with.
And I won't give accounts to just anybody either.:-)
It runs a real OS, when it's connected to the network, any authorized person can upload or download files. When I'm near computers with big screens and real keyboards, I don't want to mess with the PDA screen and stylus, but I do want to update the todo list and calendar.
I want it to come with me, when I'm going somewhere away from real keyboards.
Slightly more expensive than a Lego Mindstorms
on
Agenda VR3 Review
·
· Score: 2
I ordered one a few days ago. Haven't got it yet.
I expect a small machine running Linux with a tiny display, a serial port and an IR port. I hope to run ssh, a few tiny programs I write myself and scripts written in Perl, Python or Tcl.
The most important feature: it is small enough to ride in a robot built out of Lego Technics, and it can communicate with the Lego Mindstorms.
It'd be cool if it was usefull as an organizer, but that's not required. Heck, I've been happy with some toys that were clearly only release 0.1 material.
Once ethernet becomes a common last mile solution, fiber will surely be an option when copper can't go the distance and/or provide the bandwidth.
Ethernet over copper maxes out at 1 Gigabit. Ethernet over fiber is available at 1 and 10 gigabits today, 40 gigabits this year and 160 gigabits really soon now.
Some people may just get fiber for distance reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
In addition to the raw message checksum, possible filters include:
- checksum paragraphs individually
- ignore whitespace, punctuation and capitalization.
- drop HTML tags
- drop numbers
- drop all non-dictionary words.
Then analyze what gets by and add new filters as appropriate.In a traditional CRT, there is one beam that is shared with all the pixels. So there can't be any mechanical supports anywhere inside the tube that would interfere with the beam. In the flat CRT, each pixel has its own beam. This means there can be mechanical support around each and every pixel. It is still 14 pounds per square inch, but a lot fewer square inches per pixel.
Likewise, in a traditional million pixel monitor, each pixel is only on one one millionth of the time. In the flat screen CRT, each pixel is on all the time, so the beam can be one million times weaker, for the same brightness.
Weaker beams, fewer X-rays.
I don't think reliable means what you think it means. From reading the article it looks like proper care means adding extra checks to detect database corruption. It's a continuing struggle because each release has different bugs.
If this were a production reactor, the question should be, is there a more efficient or cost effective method to get the power out than heat+water=turbine-power? I would guess the answer is not yet on the scale needed for a power plant.
Over the years I've learned a lot of different OS's. It took a lot of time. Now I've got Linux everywhere, from my Agenda to my servers. Now I can spend more time writing stuff, and less time learning obscure OS's.
I'm working to make my Agenda talk to my Lego Mindstorms, but other developers are working on usefull stuff.
Information can help farmers improve crop yield and reduce his expenses. Also better manage pesticides and irrigation usage.
I will be thrilled if a complete EP9312 based system ends up being so inexpensive that it forces the price down on the other stuff.
There are a bunch of oscillator technologies that don't involve crystals that can be mounted on an MCM. They are either less precise or much more expensive than a crystal.
The ethernet interface needs a precision clock, or it won't work right. So a cheap truly solid state oscillator won't do.
More great news! I heard on a hacker mailing list, that Debian's stuff isn't protected either.
I snuck into the Debian site, and I got lots of good stuff. Programming tools, games, an OS that works, a couple of desktop environments, networking tools, server apps, ... gigabytes of cool stuff. Way more complete than that Microsoft ISO image.
Ignore the XP crap, and grab the good stuff before someone notices.
Or maybe we should coat our CDs with fungus eating bacteria? :-)
Shared library versioning can be made to work, so it's only annoying to have to have multiple versions of a library installed. Some other OS's still haven't figured that out.
Another usefull feature is that shared libraries don't have to be system wide. The system doesn't share libraries based on the name, it's really based on the inode and mount point. So two different libraries can be named libfoo.so.4.2 as long they're in different directories. The user may get confused, but the system won't.
As long as everything has a reasonable license, we our allowed to fix it ourselves.
I assume the Debian package is already done, or will be done shortly. Type apt-get install gnu-cash and let it sort it out.
That will give you interesting numbers that aren't very usefull. Running with less RAM and/or disk isn't progress. but if you do it, post the numbers!
More usefully, go to an overclocking website and reverse the directions. Underclock and see if the difference is significant. Likewise, see if you can spin down idle disks. Report any results, positive or negative!
I've got a machine that's sole purpose in life is to do disk to disk backups of my other systems. Would it be worthwhile to clock it down until it can just barely saturate the ethernet? I've got too many other projects to find out today, but if there's a big win, I'll try.
On the other hand, the numbers don't seem right. 9GB on a machine that old of that class? Maybe it was a really big Basic Four.
Could there be an order of magnitude on the disk size? If they are 9GBytes, that means the drives are relatively modern. Plug them into a less disgusting computer, and reverse engineer the file system.
I'm only somewhat joking. If the computer has a defragment command, it will simplify the on disk image for easier decoding.
What's the hardware interface on the disk drives? SMD (You're screwed unless you've a friend who collects obsolete minicomputers), SCSI (life is good), RLL, MFM, ATA/100(oops, wrong universe), etc... If it's from the early 1990's, there may be a similar vintage ISA disk interface for IBM PCs that is still findable on ebay.
I've worked at places where purchase orders could be done quickly. I know companies like that exist. However, in most of the places I've worked, a P.O. takes longer than a month. Sometimes several months.
Likewise, I've always gotten initial keys promptly. Replacement keys after a hardware failure sometimes take much, much longer.
If it's a serial printer, then you can use all of the serial ports in parallel. It will still takes weeks.
The refrigerators that keep the liquid nitrogen liquid make a lot of waste heat, but that heat doesn't end up in the conduit with the cable.
Switch to superconducting wire in an existing tunnel, and there is both more electrical capacity and more space for communication cables.
Maybe the NSA knows how to use Google...
The repeaters are all optical in modern cables. But you're essentially correct anyway. The repeater itself involves a change from regular fiber to doped fiber. A preexisting discontinuity in the fiber to mask the smaller discontinuity added by the tap. Also the signal is strongest there, so the NSA's tap needs a smaller percentage of the signal.
Based on zero practical experience, I'm guessing that the tap is done by the scrape and bend method. The bend can be done very slowly and steadily with a machine. Possibly taking hours or days, so there are no sudden changes to the cable signal.
They must run a fiber from the tap to the shore or a ship. There's no other way for them to get a reasonable volume of secrets from the tap.
I don't actually expect to see prices that low this year.
More importantly, a new license kicks in, so the customer is allowed to use the source code.
Software escrow is expensive, because someone has to pay for auditing the software. The escrow isn't worth much if you're not positive that the source code actually builds the right product.
I've worked at little companies, with big customers, where the big customer demanded source code escrow. I've never been on the other side.
There are many variations. I assume that license keys could also be escrowed.
I'll let the Mindstorms run the motors and poll the sensors, and the PDA can talk to the outside world. I've got 2 Mindstorms, so I can control 6 motors and read 6 sensors.
The PDA can run a web server for public stuff and ssh for programming.
And I won't give accounts to just anybody either. :-)
It runs a real OS, when it's connected to the network, any authorized person can upload or download files. When I'm near computers with big screens and real keyboards, I don't want to mess with the PDA screen and stylus, but I do want to update the todo list and calendar.
I want it to come with me, when I'm going somewhere away from real keyboards.
I expect a small machine running Linux with a tiny display, a serial port and an IR port. I hope to run ssh, a few tiny programs I write myself and scripts written in Perl, Python or Tcl.
The most important feature: it is small enough to ride in a robot built out of Lego Technics, and it can communicate with the Lego Mindstorms.
It'd be cool if it was usefull as an organizer, but that's not required. Heck, I've been happy with some toys that were clearly only release 0.1 material.
Ethernet over copper maxes out at 1 Gigabit. Ethernet over fiber is available at 1 and 10 gigabits today, 40 gigabits this year and 160 gigabits really soon now.
Some people may just get fiber for distance reasons.