It's certainly not valid in the UK, since it would force you to sign away certain rights which the Law of the Land says you cannot sign away. These include the right not to be physically attacked {if you ask someone to punch you in the face, and they do so, they can still be prosecuted for assault}, the right to say no to sexual intercourse {If you do not want to have sex with your husband, but he tries it on anyway, he has committed rape}, and certain consumer protections.
All this, however, is certainly good ammo for this project.
Hell, I wanted to take a Ph.D. just so I wouldn't have to let people know, just from looking at my name, what was between my legs. Unfortunately I made a mess of my B.Eng. Looking back, it wasn't much harm done as it just meant I had less unlearning to do when I started work.
M**t is just muscle tissue, isn't it? So would it be possible to make this stuff move? Obviously you would have to arrange to supply it with glucose and oxygen, and get rid of the lactic acid that resulted, but if you could take care of that you ought to be able to give it a slight electrical stimulus and have it do more mechanical work than you put in electricity {the extra energy coming from burning up some of the glucose}.
If you coupled the muscle to a loudspeaker cone, and fed an audio signal into the muscle, you would effectively have an amplifier that runs on sugar water! But more sensibly, have some sort of crank mechanism which could be used to turn an alternator. The speed of rotation, and thus the output frequency, would depend on the input frequency. So you could certainly use this thing in a power grid situation.
The next stage would be making artificial chlorophyll, so you could manufacture the glucose to run your bio-engine by photosynthesis. Build in the plant to decompose lactic acid to CO2 {to feed the photosynthesis} and it's now a closed cycle, powered by daylight.....
There are some vegetarians who consider that eating stuff like Linda McCartney sausages, Quorn &c. is just as bad as eating real m**t, and if you eat artificial m**t you are not a "proper" vegetarian. If you take the "efficiency" argument -- that raising animals for m**t uses up land that could have been used for growing crops for food for humans -- then those sort of things probably are worse than m**t.
How do you go on if you are a vegan, but want to eat purely organic food? Organic fertiliser is basically animal shit and inedible bits of dead animals {blood is full of iron, and bone contains phosphorus}. And you just know that you are going to be lambasted by some raw-vegan for cooking your food {me, I'd rather put up with some of my vitamins decomposed than have them all of them hidden behind an impenetrable [as far as the short human digestive tract be concerned] cell wall} if not by some fruitarian for eating deliberately-killed plants.
The biological evidence suggests that human beings are capable of living long-term on a vegetarian diet {unlike cats, who cannot manufacture taurine -- a protein found only in m**t} but are adapted to eating it at least part-time. We have several different types of teeth, including some that are evidently adapted for eating m**t, and our digestive transit is fairly rapid -- another "carnivorous" feature. On the other hand, humans' fasting stomach acid pH is about 2-4, while a dog's fasting stomach acid pH is about 1-2. Since acids are reasonably good disinfectants, this would suggest that a dog would be more tolerant of germ-infested m**t than a human being {but humans have been cooking food since we discovered how to make fire and it is possible that back-evolution could have occurred within that time: weaker stomach acid is not a survival disadvantage in a situation where food is already fairly germ-free, and so would not be de-selected}.
As for truly artificial m**t, there wouldn't be any cruelty to animals in the production, but there must have been cruelty to animals in the initial discovery process {i.e. working out what it was supposed to taste like in the first place} which would be enough to put some people off.
Scratch that, here's a simplified explanation. The virus can be found in the root directory, or sometimes in a directory called boot, and calls itself "vmlinuz". If this file is light blue, it means it is only a shortcut and you must use ls -l to find out where the shortcut is pointing. Then rm the file. Also, edit the file "/etc/shadow" and find a line which starts with root:$1$..... Put an exclamation mark ! between the : and the first $ sign. Lastly, just to make sure, you can remove the fuse from your computer's mains plug.
We know for sure that we are 100% licence compliant. We modify the software we use, sometimes quite heavily; yet we don't distribute such modified software to anyone. If we did, though, it would be as source code. Easy innit?
OTOH, if we were using closed-source software, it would be a freaking nightmare.
Well, in some jurisdictions, Windows-only hardware is technically illegal. In many jurisdictions it is technically illegal not to supply programming information for hardware on demand.
However, corporations in the USA are hiding behind the law. They want to conceal their hardware specifications not to protect themselves from competitors {the official line}, but rather to avoid exposing the mendacious claims they make in respect of their products.
Knowing how to use your sound chip to generate a tone of a specified pitch, loudness and duration is not going to help a competitor one iota. Knowing that your "modem" is little more than eight carefully-chosen resistors and a comparator, and the latest fancy 64-bit processor is doing most of the donkey work of turning sounds on a phone line into zeros and ones {a CISC processor is utterly wasted on this sort of task, and the Neumann architecture -- which is designed for generality of purpose; it can do anything faster than something that wasn't designed to do that can do it, but not necessarily as fast as something that was designed to do that and only that can do it -- imposes a bottleneck in this situation}, might put off the more tech-savvy customers.
Yes, but the most common form of "attention" a Windows server requires is for someone to hike the power lead out, wait thirty seconds, shove it back in again and press the "on" button. You probably could even train an animal to do that. {Any anecdotal evidence..... "meet Rusty, the four-legged MCSE" sort of thing..... is welcome.....}
Unix {including Linux} only ever stops working for a Good Reason; so Unix sysadmins actually have to do hard work reading and deciphering error messages and fixing stuff {and Linux admins in particular must add googling for other people's related misfortunes and extrapolating}.
You can always spot the Linux n00bs because they are the ones who reboot a misbehaving box, see exactly the same error messages as before, and think there is something unusual about that.
..... which is why you should always use the correct fuse for the appliance. That way you will never go wrong.
If you insist to use the same power lead for your kettle {about 2kW - needs 13A fuse in the plug} and your printer {less than 100W - needs 3A fuse in the plug} then you deserve what happens.
Switched-mode power supplies can cause "fuse fatigue" in 3A fuses, making them blow for no obvious reason. This is because a switched-mode PSU contains a big electrolytic capacitor which charges from the mains via a bridge rectifier. If you turn on the wall switch near the peak or the trough of the mains, then a very large current flows for a very short time {an empty capacitor is almost a short circuit, but it doesn't stay empty for long}. Of course the same thing happens with series-wound electric motors, which draw a very high current when stationary and settle down once they have reached speed.
In general, use a 3A fuse for anything that doesn't either get hot for a living or rely on a big electric motor; a 5A fuse for up to a kilowatt; and a 13A fuse for anything over a kilowatt. And make sure the cable will withstand enough current to blow the fuse. 0.5mm2 is good for 3 amps, 0.75mm2 for 5 amps {up to 10 amps if shorter than 2m.}, 1.0mm2 for 10 amps {up to 13 if shorter than 2m.} and 1.25 or 1.5mm2 for 13 amps.
Of course, fuses inside appliances also should be properly rated. Take special care, because there are two types of appliance fuse; Fast-blow {which as the name suggests blow fast in the event of too much current flow} and Anti-surge or Time-lag {which are designed to withstand brief surges and only fail in the event of a sustained overcurrent}. Generally use T on the primary side of a transformer and F on the secondary side. Sometimes also, a resistor is used to limit current flow from the mains to a few milliamps: if you ever need to replace this resistor, it must be a metal film resistor {which always fail open circuit} and not a carbon composition resistor {which, rather counter-intuitively, can fail short-circuit!}; although, since hardly anybody uses carbon composition resistors nowadays, this warning probably is less important.
What you have to remember about heat is that electronics only get hot because they are never perfect conductors nor perfect insulators {though we can make nearer-perfect insulators than we can conductors}. A perfect conductor will never get hot, no matter how much current you put through it, because the voltage drop across it will be nil and power = voltage * current. Nor will a perfect insulator, because this time, the current through it will be nil.
CMOS is based around two transistors, a P-channel FET which goes conductive when the gate is driven low, and an N-channel FET which goes conductive when the gate is driven high. The P-FET is trying to pull the output high and the N-FET is trying to pull it low. Both the gates are joined together, and this is the input. This is a simple NOT gate.
For a NAND gate, where any input 0 will drive the output to a 1, we have several P-FETs in parallel trying to drive the output high, and so many N-FETs in series trying to drive the output low. Each P-FET gate joined to an N-FET gate is one input. When they are all high, all the N-FETs turn on allowing the output to go low; when any one is low, the chain of N-FETs is broken, one or more P-FETs turn on, and the output goes high. For a NOR gate, where any input 1 will drive the output to a 0, we put the Ns in parallel and the Ps in series. You can make AND gates from NAND+NOT, OR gates from NOR+NOT, and any other combination you like. In fact you really don't need both NAND and NOR, because you can make either one out of the other; but it turns out they're equally as easy to make as each other in CMOS {not like many other technologies}.
In an ideal world this would never dissipate any power, since the input cannot be high and low at the same time so only one of the transistors will ever be on. In practice what happens is that the gates act like capacitors which take a finite time to charge and discharge. They do not switch instantaneously from conductive to non-conductive. So one stops conducting while the other is starting to conduct, and for a brief instant while the inputs are changing state both transistors are conducting a little. It's not a dead short circuit of course, otherwise something would give way..... hopefully a fuse.
Now every time something changes state, you get a little pulse of heat. Which is why fast processors need cooling. Additionally, to make sure that the logic gate output has changed state before the next clock pulse, you need to make the gate capacitances charge up quickly -- which means using a higher voltage than you could get away with at lower speeds. But 2x more volts means 2x more amps means 4x more watts.
Smaller transistors should have less gate capacitance, and so be capable of switching more quickly.
Never had a problem with PDFs myself. In fact, the gpdf viewer launched by Firefox is even a wee bit nicer than kghostview {or is it kpdf?} which is Konqueror's default PDF viewer, since it supports hyperlinks properly.
Although, I do still use Konqueror a lot. I find it's a very capable browser. But I always test everything I write in Firefox, since it will run in more places than Konq.
Pretend there are no such things as computers. Pretend we are back in the Middle Ages, and if you want to register your copyright on a work, you have to submit it, in writing, at the Copyright Office.
Now, if the Copyright Office insisted for you to use a particular make of pen to write out your manuscript, would that be fair?
software doesn't need to be verifyably secure to be secure in fact
No, I agree: software can be secure without you knowing about it. Software can even be secure by accident. But software does need to be verifiably secure in the mind of the user to be secure in the mind of the user. Even if it is secure in fact, if the user does not know that it is secure then they have a good reason not to use it.
If I myself as a user of software have any doubts about the security of that software, then the only way I can allay -- or confirm -- those doubts is by thoroughly examining the source code of the software. Which is why I insist only to use software where the author will agree to show me the source code; if the author refuses then I must assume they have something to hide.
A commercial implementation of RSA can be just as secure as an open-source version, modulo the risk of dumb programmer errors
Not necessarily. It could have all manner of nasties in it. How do you know it isn't sending your plaintext to the company's headquarters, at the same time as generating the correct cyphertext?
The only way to verify the integrity of any software -- especially, but not just security software -- is to read and understand the source code. Software vendors know this too, so if they won't show you the source code they are as good as admitting that their software is insecure.
Some hacker will graft PGP-style encryption onto SIP. You will simply send your public key in the headers -- it's called Session Initiation Protocol for a reason don'tcha know -- and the far end will encrypt against it. If anybody is listening in, they won't be able to decrypt it. Even better, you wait for sometime after the information has lost its value and publish the private key. Now nobody can even prove you really were the intended recipient.
All the tools required to do this are already available as open source, so it will be an interesting exercise for somebody.
And it will have the beneficial side-effect of killing off SKYPE. Another closed protocol bites the dust, good riddance.
You can also host files on a web site for download.
To show photos to other people, save them in.jpg and burn onto a CD-R -- most DVD players can read this format and display them on a TV. If the person has not got a DVD player, use a SCART to SCART lead to plug the DVD player into a VCR, and record the photos onto VHS.
If you are running out of screen space, increase your number of virtual desktops.
I'll give them the first stage interpolation, rebuilding the full colour matrix. The human eye does almost the same thing anyway -- we have more brightness sensors than colour sensors.
What I'm accusing manufacturers of is deliberately stretching an image so as apparently to contain many more pixels than the sensor contains, then claiming this -- rather than the sensor's actual pixel count -- as the camera's pixel count. This is really only the same thing hi-fi manufacturers do with amplifier wattages {and so you get ridiculous claims like "200 WATTS" on a CD/radio/cassette that also claims to draw just 10 watts from the mains. What the muddy mildred have they got in there -- cold fusion technology?} But at least there's a standardised way of measuring the output of an amplifier, which is to measure the RMS power just at the onset of distortion. And amplifiers don't generally come with worthless pieces of paper attempting to forbid you to inspect them thoroughly.....
You know camera manufacturers are reluctant to give out details of their RAW formats? I have an idea why this may be the case.
Suppose you have an image sensor that produces 2M pixels natively. Usually, 1/2 of the pixels are green, 1/4 are red and 1/4 are blue, in this pattern:
R G R G R G R G G B G B G B G B
So you have to do some interpolation on this, based on assumptions about how much other-colour light is falling on each pixel but not being responded to. {"Interpolation" is just mathematician's speak for "guessing what comes inbetween"} Now while you are doing this process, you can easily interpolate the whole lot up to a 4M pixel, or even 8M pixel JPEG image, just by adding imaginary pixels inbetween the real ones and guessing how much light would have hit them.
When you come to look at the RAW data, though, it will be obvious that there are only 2M pixels in it.
And that is why I think camera manufacturers do not like to reveal their RAW formats. I challenge them to prove me wrong.....
The only problem is that Greece and the UK are both members of the EU, and thus forbidden by treaty to keep secrets from one another. Therefore it would be technically impossible for a Briton to be committing espionage against Greece.
Laser printers are mono. Dot matrix printers can do colour. You need a ribbon with yellow, red, blue and black bands; and a motor that can position it vertically so any colour is between the printing head and the paper. First you put the printer into one-way printing mode, so there is a chance of dot columns actually lining up over successive rows. Then you set the line spacing to be exactly 24 dots {8 if using a 9-pin printer..... only 8 pins are used in graphics mode}, select a colour, select graphics mode, and send the data for the row. Carriage return, no line feed. Next colour, do it again. And so forth. After the last colour you do send a line feed.
Eventually, of course, the ribbon gets contaminated, since traces of the previous colour ink are still sticking to the printing pins. The yellow always looks worst. Still, this is not altogether a bad thing, as I know from bitter experience what happens when a printing pin snags against a worn ribbon. If you replace the ribbon while the yellow band still prints yellow, you will never have any problems.
You're right about Postscript, though! It's a bit of a weirdy language, but if you're used to HP calculators {not me, I was raised on Casio ones} you'll probably pick it up fine. You don't actually need to buy a laser printer for practicing on, you can always use gv to view your postscript files on screen.
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It's certainly not valid in the UK, since it would force you to sign away certain rights which the Law of the Land says you cannot sign away. These include the right not to be physically attacked {if you ask someone to punch you in the face, and they do so, they can still be prosecuted for assault}, the right to say no to sexual intercourse {If you do not want to have sex with your husband, but he tries it on anyway, he has committed rape}, and certain consumer protections.
All this, however, is certainly good ammo for this project.
Hell, I wanted to take a Ph.D. just so I wouldn't have to let people know, just from looking at my name, what was between my legs. Unfortunately I made a mess of my B.Eng. Looking back, it wasn't much harm done as it just meant I had less unlearning to do when I started work.
Sorry. F*rce of h*b*t.
M**t is just muscle tissue, isn't it? So would it be possible to make this stuff move? Obviously you would have to arrange to supply it with glucose and oxygen, and get rid of the lactic acid that resulted, but if you could take care of that you ought to be able to give it a slight electrical stimulus and have it do more mechanical work than you put in electricity {the extra energy coming from burning up some of the glucose}.
.....
If you coupled the muscle to a loudspeaker cone, and fed an audio signal into the muscle, you would effectively have an amplifier that runs on sugar water! But more sensibly, have some sort of crank mechanism which could be used to turn an alternator. The speed of rotation, and thus the output frequency, would depend on the input frequency. So you could certainly use this thing in a power grid situation.
The next stage would be making artificial chlorophyll, so you could manufacture the glucose to run your bio-engine by photosynthesis. Build in the plant to decompose lactic acid to CO2 {to feed the photosynthesis} and it's now a closed cycle, powered by daylight
There are some vegetarians who consider that eating stuff like Linda McCartney sausages, Quorn &c. is just as bad as eating real m**t, and if you eat artificial m**t you are not a "proper" vegetarian. If you take the "efficiency" argument -- that raising animals for m**t uses up land that could have been used for growing crops for food for humans -- then those sort of things probably are worse than m**t.
How do you go on if you are a vegan, but want to eat purely organic food? Organic fertiliser is basically animal shit and inedible bits of dead animals {blood is full of iron, and bone contains phosphorus}. And you just know that you are going to be lambasted by some raw-vegan for cooking your food {me, I'd rather put up with some of my vitamins decomposed than have them all of them hidden behind an impenetrable [as far as the short human digestive tract be concerned] cell wall} if not by some fruitarian for eating deliberately-killed plants.
The biological evidence suggests that human beings are capable of living long-term on a vegetarian diet {unlike cats, who cannot manufacture taurine -- a protein found only in m**t} but are adapted to eating it at least part-time. We have several different types of teeth, including some that are evidently adapted for eating m**t, and our digestive transit is fairly rapid -- another "carnivorous" feature. On the other hand, humans' fasting stomach acid pH is about 2-4, while a dog's fasting stomach acid pH is about 1-2. Since acids are reasonably good disinfectants, this would suggest that a dog would be more tolerant of germ-infested m**t than a human being {but humans have been cooking food since we discovered how to make fire and it is possible that back-evolution could have occurred within that time: weaker stomach acid is not a survival disadvantage in a situation where food is already fairly germ-free, and so would not be de-selected}.
As for truly artificial m**t, there wouldn't be any cruelty to animals in the production, but there must have been cruelty to animals in the initial discovery process {i.e. working out what it was supposed to taste like in the first place} which would be enough to put some people off.
Scratch that, here's a simplified explanation. The virus can be found in the root directory, or sometimes in a directory called boot, and calls itself "vmlinuz". If this file is light blue, it means it is only a shortcut and you must use ls -l to find out where the shortcut is pointing. Then rm the file. Also, edit the file "/etc/shadow" and find a line which starts with root:$1$..... Put an exclamation mark ! between the : and the first $ sign. Lastly, just to make sure, you can remove the fuse from your computer's mains plug.
We know for sure that we are 100% licence compliant. We modify the software we use, sometimes quite heavily; yet we don't distribute such modified software to anyone. If we did, though, it would be as source code. Easy innit?
OTOH, if we were using closed-source software, it would be a freaking nightmare.
Well, in some jurisdictions, Windows-only hardware is technically illegal. In many jurisdictions it is technically illegal not to supply programming information for hardware on demand.
However, corporations in the USA are hiding behind the law. They want to conceal their hardware specifications not to protect themselves from competitors {the official line}, but rather to avoid exposing the mendacious claims they make in respect of their products.
Knowing how to use your sound chip to generate a tone of a specified pitch, loudness and duration is not going to help a competitor one iota. Knowing that your "modem" is little more than eight carefully-chosen resistors and a comparator, and the latest fancy 64-bit processor is doing most of the donkey work of turning sounds on a phone line into zeros and ones {a CISC processor is utterly wasted on this sort of task, and the Neumann architecture -- which is designed for generality of purpose; it can do anything faster than something that wasn't designed to do that can do it, but not necessarily as fast as something that was designed to do that and only that can do it -- imposes a bottleneck in this situation}, might put off the more tech-savvy customers.
Unix {including Linux} only ever stops working for a Good Reason; so Unix sysadmins actually have to do hard work reading and deciphering error messages and fixing stuff {and Linux admins in particular must add googling for other people's related misfortunes and extrapolating}.
You can always spot the Linux n00bs because they are the ones who reboot a misbehaving box, see exactly the same error messages as before, and think there is something unusual about that.
..... which is why you should always use the correct fuse for the appliance. That way you will never go wrong.
If you insist to use the same power lead for your kettle {about 2kW - needs 13A fuse in the plug} and your printer {less than 100W - needs 3A fuse in the plug} then you deserve what happens.
Switched-mode power supplies can cause "fuse fatigue" in 3A fuses, making them blow for no obvious reason. This is because a switched-mode PSU contains a big electrolytic capacitor which charges from the mains via a bridge rectifier. If you turn on the wall switch near the peak or the trough of the mains, then a very large current flows for a very short time {an empty capacitor is almost a short circuit, but it doesn't stay empty for long}. Of course the same thing happens with series-wound electric motors, which draw a very high current when stationary and settle down once they have reached speed.
In general, use a 3A fuse for anything that doesn't either get hot for a living or rely on a big electric motor; a 5A fuse for up to a kilowatt; and a 13A fuse for anything over a kilowatt. And make sure the cable will withstand enough current to blow the fuse. 0.5mm2 is good for 3 amps, 0.75mm2 for 5 amps {up to 10 amps if shorter than 2m.}, 1.0mm2 for 10 amps {up to 13 if shorter than 2m.} and 1.25 or 1.5mm2 for 13 amps.
Of course, fuses inside appliances also should be properly rated. Take special care, because there are two types of appliance fuse; Fast-blow {which as the name suggests blow fast in the event of too much current flow} and Anti-surge or Time-lag {which are designed to withstand brief surges and only fail in the event of a sustained overcurrent}. Generally use T on the primary side of a transformer and F on the secondary side. Sometimes also, a resistor is used to limit current flow from the mains to a few milliamps: if you ever need to replace this resistor, it must be a metal film resistor {which always fail open circuit} and not a carbon composition resistor {which, rather counter-intuitively, can fail short-circuit!}; although, since hardly anybody uses carbon composition resistors nowadays, this warning probably is less important.
What you have to remember about heat is that electronics only get hot because they are never perfect conductors nor perfect insulators {though we can make nearer-perfect insulators than we can conductors}. A perfect conductor will never get hot, no matter how much current you put through it, because the voltage drop across it will be nil and power = voltage * current. Nor will a perfect insulator, because this time, the current through it will be nil.
..... hopefully a fuse.
CMOS is based around two transistors, a P-channel FET which goes conductive when the gate is driven low, and an N-channel FET which goes conductive when the gate is driven high. The P-FET is trying to pull the output high and the N-FET is trying to pull it low. Both the gates are joined together, and this is the input. This is a simple NOT gate.
For a NAND gate, where any input 0 will drive the output to a 1, we have several P-FETs in parallel trying to drive the output high, and so many N-FETs in series trying to drive the output low. Each P-FET gate joined to an N-FET gate is one input. When they are all high, all the N-FETs turn on allowing the output to go low; when any one is low, the chain of N-FETs is broken, one or more P-FETs turn on, and the output goes high. For a NOR gate, where any input 1 will drive the output to a 0, we put the Ns in parallel and the Ps in series. You can make AND gates from NAND+NOT, OR gates from NOR+NOT, and any other combination you like. In fact you really don't need both NAND and NOR, because you can make either one out of the other; but it turns out they're equally as easy to make as each other in CMOS {not like many other technologies}.
In an ideal world this would never dissipate any power, since the input cannot be high and low at the same time so only one of the transistors will ever be on. In practice what happens is that the gates act like capacitors which take a finite time to charge and discharge. They do not switch instantaneously from conductive to non-conductive. So one stops conducting while the other is starting to conduct, and for a brief instant while the inputs are changing state both transistors are conducting a little. It's not a dead short circuit of course, otherwise something would give way
Now every time something changes state, you get a little pulse of heat. Which is why fast processors need cooling. Additionally, to make sure that the logic gate output has changed state before the next clock pulse, you need to make the gate capacitances charge up quickly -- which means using a higher voltage than you could get away with at lower speeds. But 2x more volts means 2x more amps means 4x more watts.
Smaller transistors should have less gate capacitance, and so be capable of switching more quickly.
Never had a problem with PDFs myself. In fact, the gpdf viewer launched by Firefox is even a wee bit nicer than kghostview {or is it kpdf?} which is Konqueror's default PDF viewer, since it supports hyperlinks properly.
Although, I do still use Konqueror a lot. I find it's a very capable browser. But I always test everything I write in Firefox, since it will run in more places than Konq.
Pretend there are no such things as computers. Pretend we are back in the Middle Ages, and if you want to register your copyright on a work, you have to submit it, in writing, at the Copyright Office.
Now, if the Copyright Office insisted for you to use a particular make of pen to write out your manuscript, would that be fair?
If I myself as a user of software have any doubts about the security of that software, then the only way I can allay -- or confirm -- those doubts is by thoroughly examining the source code of the software. Which is why I insist only to use software where the author will agree to show me the source code; if the author refuses then I must assume they have something to hide.
One thing I have learned in 34 years is that if you want to pull a bird, one of the surefirest ways is to go out wearing a dress.
Unfortunately, the bird you pull will invariably be a taff.
Yeah, and Hansel and Grethel found a house made of gingerbread. What's your point?
The only way to verify the integrity of any software -- especially, but not just security software -- is to read and understand the source code. Software vendors know this too, so if they won't show you the source code they are as good as admitting that their software is insecure.
Any closed-source cryptography is not at all secure.
Some hacker will graft PGP-style encryption onto SIP. You will simply send your public key in the headers -- it's called Session Initiation Protocol for a reason don'tcha know -- and the far end will encrypt against it. If anybody is listening in, they won't be able to decrypt it. Even better, you wait for sometime after the information has lost its value and publish the private key. Now nobody can even prove you really were the intended recipient.
All the tools required to do this are already available as open source, so it will be an interesting exercise for somebody.
And it will have the beneficial side-effect of killing off SKYPE. Another closed protocol bites the dust, good riddance.
I'll give them the first stage interpolation, rebuilding the full colour matrix. The human eye does almost the same thing anyway -- we have more brightness sensors than colour sensors.
.....
What I'm accusing manufacturers of is deliberately stretching an image so as apparently to contain many more pixels than the sensor contains, then claiming this -- rather than the sensor's actual pixel count -- as the camera's pixel count. This is really only the same thing hi-fi manufacturers do with amplifier wattages {and so you get ridiculous claims like "200 WATTS" on a CD/radio/cassette that also claims to draw just 10 watts from the mains. What the muddy mildred have they got in there -- cold fusion technology?} But at least there's a standardised way of measuring the output of an amplifier, which is to measure the RMS power just at the onset of distortion. And amplifiers don't generally come with worthless pieces of paper attempting to forbid you to inspect them thoroughly
You know camera manufacturers are reluctant to give out details of their RAW formats? I have an idea why this may be the case.
.....
Suppose you have an image sensor that produces 2M pixels natively. Usually, 1/2 of the pixels are green, 1/4 are red and 1/4 are blue, in this pattern:
R G R G R G R G
G B G B G B G B
So you have to do some interpolation on this, based on assumptions about how much other-colour light is falling on each pixel but not being responded to. {"Interpolation" is just mathematician's speak for "guessing what comes inbetween"} Now while you are doing this process, you can easily interpolate the whole lot up to a 4M pixel, or even 8M pixel JPEG image, just by adding imaginary pixels inbetween the real ones and guessing how much light would have hit them.
When you come to look at the RAW data, though, it will be obvious that there are only 2M pixels in it.
And that is why I think camera manufacturers do not like to reveal their RAW formats. I challenge them to prove me wrong
The only problem is that Greece and the UK are both members of the EU, and thus forbidden by treaty to keep secrets from one another. Therefore it would be technically impossible for a Briton to be committing espionage against Greece.
Laser printers are mono. Dot matrix printers can do colour. You need a ribbon with yellow, red, blue and black bands; and a motor that can position it vertically so any colour is between the printing head and the paper. First you put the printer into one-way printing mode, so there is a chance of dot columns actually lining up over successive rows. Then you set the line spacing to be exactly 24 dots {8 if using a 9-pin printer ..... only 8 pins are used in graphics mode}, select a colour, select graphics mode, and send the data for the row. Carriage return, no line feed. Next colour, do it again. And so forth. After the last colour you do send a line feed.
Eventually, of course, the ribbon gets contaminated, since traces of the previous colour ink are still sticking to the printing pins. The yellow always looks worst. Still, this is not altogether a bad thing, as I know from bitter experience what happens when a printing pin snags against a worn ribbon. If you replace the ribbon while the yellow band still prints yellow, you will never have any problems.
You're right about Postscript, though! It's a bit of a weirdy language, but if you're used to HP calculators {not me, I was raised on Casio ones} you'll probably pick it up fine. You don't actually need to buy a laser printer for practicing on, you can always use gv to view your postscript files on screen.
No.