There was an article in slashdot not too long ago that described how the radio spectrum is being used incredibly inefficiently.
It went on to describe how much more information could easy be transmitted over the same wavelengths without interfering with each other if it was all digital.
I'm not an expert on the subject, but I believe it suggested making the radio spectrum entirely unregulated, including tv I imagine. TV signals with the current information load (not high def necessarily) could transmit to your tv while other signals used the same frequency. TV's would have to, naturally, read the digital signal and just play the tv specific data.
Of course, getting everyone to switch to technology like that would be like getting everyone to switch to High Definition tv. We all know how well that's working out.
Ironically, the London mayor managed to push the camera/congestion charge deal through with the premise that it wouldn't be used for surveillance, according to theregister.
There was a bit of a backlash during the days around the first week when he was heard on the radio extolling all of the surveillance capabilities they could do too, such as scanning faces for criminals. Of course, they can't even if it was permitted. The tech's not quite there yet, and the tech they used can't do it.
What law was broken again? The information I'm reading is that someone cracked the communications of the game, and set on the god flag. They didn't actually break into the server to do this.
The only law I see broken here is the DMCA.
I'm not supporting this sort of activity. I'm just wondering which law you are referencing.
I'm trying to understand everyone's math here. I couldn't find any reference to $180 or $100 in the article, and the replies seem to lack any kind of source material.
But I *really* don't understand your 100 - 180. This suggests that the purchse price is $100, and the cost to mfr is $180. As I am pretty sure this isn't the case anywhere, I'm totally lost on this. Everywhere I've seen, the price is in the $199 range. In Europe, it's around 165 pounds or so. I don't believe it's $100 even in Japan.
Perhaps everyone is using a different monetary system? What gives?
Considering some of the code I've had to support, I could probably deal with it.
As opposed to code by authors from the school of copy & paste, who don't include comments, and are generally confused as to what they are trying to do, I'll take the decompiled code that actually works but needs commenting.
Just a small correction: a dehumidifier actually warms up the air in the process. It doesn't remove heat from the air, just water. (Unless you have the warm air blowing outside, in which case you have an air conditioner.)
if someone will someday invent a terraherz(sp) reader that measures your heart rate purely by watching the beating rather than measuring the electrical pulses.
I know that the technology is getting better, and there is hope that it can use existing background terraherz radiation rather than generating more.
The article I read (in 2000 I believe) wrote about it possibly being the base for tricorder type technology.
Well, chances are if you can visit the site, you already have a computer. It's not like he used it up in order to display the results.
But I understand your point. A hospital wouldn't be able to dedicate the price of a $400 computer and monitor or a $200 pda just for displaying the ecg results.
Oh wait. I guess they wouldn't have to dedicate it if the computer is can handle any of the computing requirements. And they already spend much more than that on the medical industry made ecg machines.
How much is a dedicated ecg machine? I saw on http://www.numed.co.uk/prices.html that pda's with the attachment and the software cost upwards of $1350.
Get a webcam, or some other video feed of the front walk. When it detects motion, the pvr program freezes and shows instead the image from the camera.
Then I'd just need a microphone near my chair and speaker outside so I could tell them to take a hike. (kidding) It would make it a lot easier waiting for people if I didn't have to wonder if I hadn't heard the doorbell, or race to the door when it does ring.
I've been toying with the idea of writing an ivr program (interactive voice response) on a spare machine as both an answering machine as well as a pbx. (caller has to select a number to get in, similar to the privacyguard.com stuff.)
Combine that with freevo, and when the phone rings, the tv show freezes and the caller's number and name is displayed on screen.
Or you could simply hit a button on the remote for Do Not Disturb, and only messages are taken (unless the user selects the Emergency option on the ivr software.)
True, many companies are running at low efficiency, but that just means that they have to charge a lot more to hire all those extra people.
That extra cost goes into their prices, which drives up everyone else's costs.
I contracted for a year at a company that handled paychecks and benefits ivr (interactive voice response). The systems were incredibly inefficient, but they charged for each programmer hour back to the client.
We figured that if they designed their applications to not require a whole app for each client, they could get away from charging 2 months of programmer time per client.
But since they charged so much per hour (much more than the contracting companies received), we figured that this company would go bankrupt from efficiency. They actually made a huge profit from being inefficient.
If they redesigned their programming systems to be efficient, and charged a flat fee to each client, they wouldn't need as many seasonal programmers on staff. That would mean their clients would pay less as well, which would allow THEIR clients to charge less.
So yes, there might be less work, but prices might actually drop without causing deflation.
What we might actually have is a 20 hour work week, with less pay, but with more purchasing power.
"Angel" was a spinoff of "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer". "Firefly", although a great show IMO, wasn't a spinoff. It was just another show by the same writer.
A spinoff show would be a show that takes characters from the first show into a new one based in the same universe.
"Firefly" isn't in the same universe as "Firefly" otherwise Nathan would have had a vampire as a pilot.
It may have been originally settled by Puritans, but they weren't the only ones here when the constitution was created. In fact, the constitution expressly forbids discrimination over religion.
If this were simply a christian nation, there would be only one legal religion here.
Slashdot Mirror
There was an article in slashdot not too long ago that described how the radio spectrum is being used incredibly inefficiently.
It went on to describe how much more information could easy be transmitted over the same wavelengths without interfering with each other if it was all digital.
I'm not an expert on the subject, but I believe it suggested making the radio spectrum entirely unregulated, including tv I imagine. TV signals with the current information load (not high def necessarily) could transmit to your tv while other signals used the same frequency. TV's would have to, naturally, read the digital signal and just play the tv specific data.
Of course, getting everyone to switch to technology like that would be like getting everyone to switch to High Definition tv. We all know how well that's working out.
This was marked funny? If even a few people hadn't heard this joke before, I might accept it, but please. This joke's been stale for 10 years.
Ironically, the London mayor managed to push the camera/congestion charge deal through with the premise that it wouldn't be used for surveillance, according to theregister.
There was a bit of a backlash during the days around the first week when he was heard on the radio extolling all of the surveillance capabilities they could do too, such as scanning faces for criminals. Of course, they can't even if it was permitted. The tech's not quite there yet, and the tech they used can't do it.
What law was broken again? The information I'm reading is that someone cracked the communications of the game, and set on the god flag. They didn't actually break into the server to do this.
The only law I see broken here is the DMCA.
I'm not supporting this sort of activity. I'm just wondering which law you are referencing.
Ironically, I bought a Sony DVD-r/rw +r/rw drive for my computer on Friday. If I had known about this, I would have waited.
;)
Oh well. It's installed and works. I guess I can't kick.
Btw, I really got a kick out of your sig, so I'm stealing it for my email use for a while.
I'm trying to understand everyone's math here. I couldn't find any reference to $180 or $100 in the article, and the replies seem to lack any kind of source material.
But I *really* don't understand your 100 - 180. This suggests that the purchse price is $100, and the cost to mfr is $180. As I am pretty sure this isn't the case anywhere, I'm totally lost on this. Everywhere I've seen, the price is in the $199 range. In Europe, it's around 165 pounds or so. I don't believe it's $100 even in Japan.
Perhaps everyone is using a different monetary system? What gives?
Of course, it would probably help if the new people actually have skills.
Considering some of the code I've had to support, I could probably deal with it.
As opposed to code by authors from the school of copy & paste, who don't include comments, and are generally confused as to what they are trying to do, I'll take the decompiled code that actually works but needs commenting.
I dunno. You are likely right.
But if the window A/C unit is dripping tons of water, that probably means that the humidity of the room is pretty high.
In my area, (Chicago suburbs), the humidity is usually high when it's warm enough to need a/c. Having a dehumidifier running helps.
In places such as Arizona, a dehumidifier would be likely useless when trying to cool the house.
Just a small correction: a dehumidifier actually warms up the air in the process. It doesn't remove heat from the air, just water. (Unless you have the warm air blowing outside, in which case you have an air conditioner.)
In an older place I lived, I ran a dehumidifier and a window air conditioner. It worked reasonably well.
The dehumifier dried the air, which helped the window unit work better.
It's easier to cool warmer dry air than warm humid air, since part of the work of the a/c unit is removing the water.
if someone will someday invent a terraherz(sp) reader that measures your heart rate purely by watching the beating rather than measuring the electrical pulses.
I know that the technology is getting better, and there is hope that it can use existing background terraherz radiation rather than generating more.
The article I read (in 2000 I believe) wrote about it possibly being the base for tricorder type technology.
I'm switching to base pi, just so I can finally define pi as 1.
Well, chances are if you can visit the site, you already have a computer. It's not like he used it up in order to display the results.
But I understand your point. A hospital wouldn't be able to dedicate the price of a $400 computer and monitor or a $200 pda just for displaying the ecg results.
Oh wait. I guess they wouldn't have to dedicate it if the computer is can handle any of the computing requirements. And they already spend much more than that on the medical industry made ecg machines.
How much is a dedicated ecg machine? I saw on http://www.numed.co.uk/prices.html that pda's with the attachment and the software cost upwards of $1350.
Still, I'd rather have a tricorder.
Hmm. Doorbell....that brings up another idea.
Get a webcam, or some other video feed of the front walk. When it detects motion, the pvr program freezes and shows instead the image from the camera.
Then I'd just need a microphone near my chair and speaker outside so I could tell them to take a hike. (kidding) It would make it a lot easier waiting for people if I didn't have to wonder if I hadn't heard the doorbell, or race to the door when it does ring.
Buffy's gone and everything else is all reruns for the next two months anyway!
I had forgotten to mention that there is a java based answering machine program on sourceforge called TOEJAM.
I believe it doesn't do ivr though, so you can't have the dialer press 1 for this, 2 for that, and 9 for emergency.
I've been toying with the idea of writing an ivr program (interactive voice response) on a spare machine as both an answering machine as well as a pbx. (caller has to select a number to get in, similar to the privacyguard.com stuff.)
Combine that with freevo, and when the phone rings, the tv show freezes and the caller's number and name is displayed on screen.
Or you could simply hit a button on the remote for Do Not Disturb, and only messages are taken (unless the user selects the Emergency option on the ivr software.)
But the quality of the programming would suck.
Oh, wait. It does anyway.
Not quite.
True, many companies are running at low efficiency, but that just means that they have to charge a lot more to hire all those extra people.
That extra cost goes into their prices, which drives up everyone else's costs.
I contracted for a year at a company that handled paychecks and benefits ivr (interactive voice response). The systems were incredibly inefficient, but they charged for each programmer hour back to the client.
We figured that if they designed their applications to not require a whole app for each client, they could get away from charging 2 months of programmer time per client.
But since they charged so much per hour (much more than the contracting companies received), we figured that this company would go bankrupt from efficiency. They actually made a huge profit from being inefficient.
If they redesigned their programming systems to be efficient, and charged a flat fee to each client, they wouldn't need as many seasonal programmers on staff. That would mean their clients would pay less as well, which would allow THEIR clients to charge less.
So yes, there might be less work, but prices might actually drop without causing deflation.
What we might actually have is a 20 hour work week, with less pay, but with more purchasing power.
"Angel" was a spinoff of "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer". "Firefly", although a great show IMO, wasn't a spinoff. It was just another show by the same writer.
A spinoff show would be a show that takes characters from the first show into a new one based in the same universe.
"Firefly" isn't in the same universe as "Firefly" otherwise Nathan would have had a vampire as a pilot.
Agreed, child pron is not good.
But theregister.com put it well when they noticed that the the US and Britain are more concerned about people viewing it than the people making it.
I'm not defending people who view it, but it's not too far from indicting everyone who drinks because some drinkers also drive.
Hence the part "no one will buy cars knowing that such a device is in it."
Actually, no. This isn't a christian nation.
It may have been originally settled by Puritans, but they weren't the only ones here when the constitution was created. In fact, the constitution expressly forbids discrimination over religion.
If this were simply a christian nation, there would be only one legal religion here.
Of course, this is WAY off topic.
Huh.
I'm thinking maybe I'll just keep my old '92 cavalier instead of buying new after all.
I suspect that unless a law requires such a device, (don't think it won't happen), no one will buy cars knowing that such a device is in it.