No, you're wrong. The 8088 has a 16-bit internal architecture, however, it only brings out 8 data lines - so "word" transfers take 2 clock cycles, but you needed only 8n one-bit-wide RAM chips and one 8-bit-wide *ROM chip for the memory. Bear in mind memory was expensive when these things reigned supreme! The 8086 requires 16-bit-wide memory, hence 16n one-bit-wide RAM chips and two 8-bit-wide *ROM chips. I think it has a compatibility mode whereby it can access memory and I/O devices in 8-bit bytes rather than 16-bit words.
What is the big deal? There may be some code in the 2.4 kernel which the courts may decide belongs to SCO, but it is highly likely that the courts will rule that SCO, by their own deliberate action, allowed that code to enter the Linux kernel and be released under the GPL; and, having done that, they can't change their minds. But there are too many variables. Remember the old saying..... if "if"s and "and"s were kettles and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers!
The most likely outcome is that SCO's claim on the intellectual property is nullified - and SCO had better hope that nobody who has paid them licence fees decides to sue for their money back with interest.
At any rate, Linux users have a cast-iron defence: ignorance of the fact. {Ignorance of the law is a different matter. Ignorance of the law is only a defence if you are a copper, and your victim didn't know that the law didn't allow you to rough them up.} Until SCO tells us exactly which bits of the kernel are in violation of their rights - which they will need to do in order to prove anyone guilty - then we all benefit from internationally-mandated presumption of innocence.
In the absolute worst case, the 3.0 kernel will have to be re-developed from 2.2. Nobody loses anything.
Government departments might have a need to be certain about the software they are using. If you supplied closed source software to the Government, what is to stop you from logging every keystroke or something similar, behind their backs, if they can't see the source code? There is real potential for National Security to be compromised if governments are using untrustworthy software.
So, I'm presuming that Government departments can and do mandate that software suppliers show them the source code - and, if necesary, that they compile it under appropriate supervision - otherwise they will exercise their right to shop elsewhere. After all, rules are rules and apply equally to all. So it's not as though this would favour any one company over another.
They do, don't they? Check the source code thoroughly, I mean. Don't they? Surely to goodness the government considers the real rights of the people not to be spied on or charged too much money for essential services {amongst other things} an order of magnitude more important than the supposed right of a corporation to keep secrets from its customers?
If someone who works in a Government department responsible for auditing source code of software to determine its suitability for Governmental use could let me know, this would set my mind at rest.
You don't need electricity for desalination. You can do it using solar power. There evidently is plenty of this; because if there wasn't, then you wouldn't need irrigation. I'm not going to cover the techniques because they have been extensively covered elsewhere. Just suffice it to say it's based on an old survival technique; and involves trenches, polyethylene sheeting and plastic or metal rain guttering.
Reduction is the opposite of oxidation. When one thing gets oxidised, something else gets reduced.
Classical definition: oxidation = addition of oxygen, reduction = removal of oxygen.
Modern definition, since we've discovered that oxygen is not the only oxidising agent: oxidation = loss of bonding electrons, reduction = gain of bonding electrons.
For instance, in sulphur dioxide, the sulphur has an oxidation state of IV. SO2 can bond with an O-- ion to give SO3-- {still oxidation state IV so far - there are six bonds with the oxygen, but there are two extra electrons making the -- ion} or be further oxidised to SO3 {now oxidation state VI} which can bond with O-- to give the familiar SO4-- ion. If the SO3-- ion were to lose two electrons and become sulphur trioxide SO3, it would have increased its oxidation state to VI. Remember: Oil Rig - Oxidation Is Loss, Reduction Is Gain.
Anyway, back to the point, getting energy from glucose is nothing new. You can get energy from glucose by setting fire to it. Fag-ash makes a good catalyst for lighting it; no idea which of the very many chemicals it contains the actual substance is that does the business, though. What is even less remarkable is that if you measure the energy that comes from burning a known amount of glucose to produce known amounts of CO2 and H2O, you will find it equal to the amount of energy that your body can extract from that glucose. Somebody called Hess actually managed to get this law named after themself, even though it should have been obvious that anything else would violate the First Law of Thermodynamics.
One thing worries me about the X-Prize and that is safety.
Why should that worry you?
Anyone who gets hurt or killed has only themself to blame. {I'm assuming no collateral damage here - time will tell how valid that is. My guess is that a rocket probably will break up into chunks that are too small to do much harm to anything else}.
For instance, back in the early days of steam transportation, people were quite unafraid to sit astride a tank of water over a coal fire. A few burst boilers later, people began to fit manometers and pressure relief valves to steam powered machinery as a matter of course. Nobody was forcing them to be steam pioneers. They were merely following their own morbid curiosity. [side note: does any religion consider curiosity a virtue?] It cost them their lives, but you have to put that into context. How many people died in experiments with steam transportation? And was the eventual benefit to society worth it? Like it or not, the computer on which you are reading this most probably is powered by some sort of steam engine. Should we have stopped experimenting after the first time someone died? But why stop then? Perhaps we should have stopped messing about with fire the first time someone got a nasty burn. Perhaps we should never have stepped down from the trees {or out of the sea, if you believe some theories} just in case someone stepped on something nasty.
You need to grow up and deal with it. People make mistakes, they die and get hurt. It's up to the ones that are left to sort out how to really achieve the effect their predecessors were aiming for.
I've never understood the need for Samba. Microsoft's SMB implementation is a proprietary protocol and thus poorly documented, mostly from "reasonable force" reverse-engineering. It would make significantly more sense for someone to implement an NFS client for Windows.
Why would anyone want to run Microsoft SQL server on Linux, when there is already a far better relational database server available that runs just fine on Linux?
On what charge? How about computer misuse in the second degree? Since MS not only wrote the lousy software, but refused to show the users the source code so they could subject it to independent scrutiny {How is it even legal for them to hide the source code from users? What don't they want us to see?} I think you would have a pretty strong case against them.
Actually, the caconical operator for joining strings is the full stop / decimal point / dot (.) + is used for addition, which is not the same thing.
If you have, say,
$mins = "30";
$step = "5";
$mins = $mins + $step;
You probably want the new value of $mins to be "35", not "305".
If a language was smart enough to be able to tell a string from a number without prompting, yet stupid enough to use the same operator for concatenating strings and adding numbers, you might find that "2" + "2" == "22" ! That probably isn't what you want. {Javascript is so afflicted, and I often find myself having to subtract negative numbers instead of adding. If I remember rightly, VAX/VMS could actually subtract strings, and it did use the + and - operators for strings. Gick.}
And, while your C string concatenation looks complicated, there's nothing to stop you putting it into a function - arguably, that's the whole point of C - and #including it whether or not you actually need it..... compilers these days are smart enough not to put in the code for a function if there isn't actually a call to it in the source. But back in the days, when it was safe to assume stupid machines and smart humans, every byte you could save was important.
Why not write to your elected representatives and propose a bill to limit the term of copyright to five years from the receipt of the first royalty payment, or five years from the date of publication if no royalty payments are rceived within that time, after which the work enters the public domain. This term should not be extensible under any circumstances and, if any technological measures are used to prevent copying, at least one unprotected copy should be placed in escrow with the relevant authorities in order that the work can actually be placed in the public domain. Circumvention of protection on a work which has, or should have, already entered into the public domain should be explicitly permitted.
The whole idea of copyright is to provide a limited term of exclusivity so you can make money from your work, in return for the promise that one day, your work will enter the public domain. Frankly, five years should be enough time for anyone to make a fair profit {which is why I think it should be counted from the receipt of the first royalty payment}; and, if you haven't made any money out of it in that time, you're never going to, so you should cut your losses.
I'll maybe rewrite this in more bill-like terms and repost it, if anyone else thinks it's a good idea.
But once one person has gone to the effort of doing it, then it's game over. Everyone then potentially has access to the information. The kind of person who spends money on hacking a cheap camera is not the kind of person who keeps information like how it was done to themself.
Also, photographs you take probably are not copyrighted, unless you actually intend for them to enter the public domain someday. But they may be your secrets. They sure as hell aren't the camera supplier's secrets.
It all depends on the ASA rating. This is a measure of how big the light-sensitive particles on the film are - which in turn determines how many of them there are, how much light you need to turn the film totally black {each particle needs the same, fixed amount} and how fine the detail will be {think of those particles as pixels}. 100 ASA film {many fine particles} takes really fine detailed pictures, but it needs a lot of light to expose it properly. This means you need a long exposure time and a wide aperture. At long exposure times, you are more prone to camera wobble; at wide apertures, you are more prone to spherical and chromatic aberration and the field of view is shallower: you're using more of the lens {so more chance for that image to get distorted and colour-fringed} and it is behaving less like a pinhole {a pinhole doesn't have a focal length, but produces a perfect, if rather dim, image at any distance}. 200 or 400 ASA {fewer, bigger particles} are easier to expose, hence they are often used in cheap cameras. 1000 ASA is good for shots of moving subjects - it's just on the crossover point between distortion due to motion and distortion due to film grain. Above this speed, the grain really starts to show - but you can get shots in poor light without using a flash.
It's all a big trade-off. The "perfect film" depends on what you're trying to photograph, how far away it is, whether or not it's moving and what the light is like. So a professional photographer may well need several different kinds of film and several different camesras. However, for holiday snaps and the like, manufacturers have already found a compromise solution that works enough of the time that people aren't complaining.
And that being said, high speed film today is less grainy than it used to be. But it will never be as good as low speed film because the laws of physics are in the way.
Yes, I know that now. And next time, I will. And, I'm guessing, a few other people will too after seeing this. All it takes is a few more poeple to do it. They might think it's a movement!
Make your own GNU/Linux distro based on kernel 2.4.20 and KDE3. Slackware would be a good starting point if only because it's so customisable {and also available in a non-installation, "live CD" format}. Have this on all the public machines, and give away copies to customers who want the Linux experience at home. But here's the good bit. You don't actually tell people it's Linux. That way, you don't risk putting them off.
When your students are surfing in Konqueror, producing documents in KWord and working figures in with KSpread and KChart, or banging out their own valid HTML in Kate and uploading it to the web with gFTP, then and only then do you tell them the awful truth: That wasn't Windows! Like some ancient TV advert for margarine or a m**t substitute, where the "victim" seems totally shocked to discover it wasn't butter or m**t, [side note: where do they get these people with no taste buds?] they don't find out till it's too late. But here's the beauty; with one of your free CDs, they can put the same software on thir home PC.
But whatever you do, you've got to integrate it seamlessly. Don't be like one of those "one book for the whole range" instruction manuals that come with a piece of cheap kit and shows you the pictures of a more expensive one so you end up wishing you'd bought that instead. Integrate the distribution with the course.
And don't even mention vi or emacs. Stay with Kate if you're running X, pico otherwise.
When I bought my Packard Bell laptop from Dixons, it came with Win XP Home. I tried to obtain a refund from Dixons, but they said I had paid nothing for the software, as it was included in the purchase price of the machine, and therefore they would not be able to refund me any money. I am sure there was a hole in their argument, but frankly I could have done without the hastle. That's always the trouble when you're arguing with an idiot.
In the end, the first CD I booted up on it was Knoppix, and I used a pencil and paper to note down the configuration information it autodetected; then I installed Debian. The guy in Dixons had suggested I should sell on my copy of XP, but had no clue as to how I might accomplish this given that the original media was actually a hidden partition on the hard drive. I suppose I could pass on the licence key code to someone installing a pirated copy of XP, but I really don't know anyone I dislike enough to suggest that they install XP.
Big respect to this guy for sheer staying power. He truly was that second mouse. Let this story be an inspiration to us all. I know that, when this laptop finally conks out and it's time to buy another, then I'll fight the Microsoft Tax all the way.
As long as they can make an infra-red version, anyway. Suppose you were leasing a house to a bunch of hippies and you suspected them of growing some happy herbs in the attic using high-powered electric lights which give off infra-red radiation. If a police helicopter with infra-red camera were flying overhead, you might get asked some awkward questions. So it would be good to use to make sure that your tenants weren't doing anything naughty. You could get an overhead infra-red image before the helicopter does, and perhaps have a quiet word with your tenants.
Or, of course, you might be a bunch of hippies growing some happy herbs in your attic, and want to make sure you weren't putting on too much of a light show for the Old Bill.
Of course, if you had some legitimate business growing legal plants in you attic, you might want to avoid attracting unwanted attention from the authorities {and wasting their time while they could be going after evil drug barons;-).....} and, if that was the case, you could line the roof space with insulatuon, with reflective foil on the inside, and use an extractor fan to draw out hot air into a disused chimney. Then you could use the camera to check the effectiveness of your stray heat management measures.
I was thinking that the sound cards would be in two separate computers - say, a Mac and a PC. They would most likely be powered from the same extension lead, so share a common earth, but the impedance of the cable might be enough to cause a problem. Of course, individual situations vary.
Actually, a transformer would increase the likelyhood of mains pickup if it is in close proximity to a mains cable or mains transformer, and isn't physically oriented correctly (or comprehenisvely sheilded).
I had a power hum problem once with a device I made using an LT44-type audio transformer. It turned out that the outermost end of the windings has to be grounded. {In a mains transformer, the windings are stacked one above the other, separated by a divider moulded in the bobbin, to give extra insulation withstand voltage; in an audio transformer, they are all in together.} It should be obvious from looking at the transformer which is the inside and which is the outside end. Needless to say, I didn't, and it took much head-scratching to resolve the situation.
But isn't that pretty much what the GPL says? It doesn't preclude parallel releases under an alternative licence. Look at MySQL, for example. It is available either under the GPL, or on a proprietary licence. As successive versions of Ghostscript are released on proprietary licence, the old version gets GPL'ed.
I'd actually be all for closed source software being illegal, simple as that. You write code and you let everybody use and modify it, or you keep it to yourself and nobody uses it {though maybe I'd make a concession that you can install the software on a server machine under your control and allow others to make use of it remotely by means of client software on their machines}. No need for lawyers, either - everyone can understand what no means. So what if it puts people out of business? The abolition of slavery put people out of business, and I defy anyone to tell me that was a bad thing. The abolition of closed source software could well be the next socio-technological revolution. Wake up, people! If they won't let you look at the source code, then what the f**k are they trying to hide from you?
A simple transformer is a crude bandpass filter. It would actually work quite well, and have the side effect of breaking the ground continuity and thus reducing the potential for mains hum pickup. The main problem I can see is impedance matching. It might need a hefty R-C network to compensate for the inductance of the primary.
And you're probably right, using valves is a bit OTT. What with all that solid state stuff upstream and downstream, they'd be wasted.
Anyway, sod the theories. While all this is happening, our rights are being eroded. Who's up for doing some actual comparative testing?
Just like you can't go over seas for drugs/sex/etc that would be illegal in the states,
Muddy Mildred! At least in Britain {and TTBOMK Germany also} you can quite legally go to the Netherlands, chuff a few doobies and you can't be busted when you come back.
You break the law in another country doing something that would not be illegal at home => you get punished.
{Greece is a member of the EU and therefore not allowed by international treaty to keep secrets from Britain, or other EU member states. Ergo, it is technically impossible for a Briton to commit espionage in Greece.}
You don't break the law in another country doing something that would be illegal at home => you don't get punished.
If the US government considers non-infringing acts committed off US territory to be crimes, then it should also consider infringing acts committed off US territory not to be crimes. You can't punch a hole in one side of a coin.
You need some true analogue bandpass filtering to remove the artefacts, and ideally it wants to be implemented using instrumentation-grade op-amps and powered from a linear regulator {as opposed to a switched mode supply as used in a computer} or even rechargeable batteries. Alternatively, use a pentode as a high-gain preamp to give you several volts of headroom, passive filtering {with its inherent negative dB gain} and a triode to match the impedance back to what the line input is expecting.
If you haven't got all the kit needed to do that, try buffering via tape, which has an inherent bandpass characteristic. If your deck has a special mode for recording from FM stereo, engage that, and any noise reduction you can find. Set the level to match your favourite high-bias {chrome or metal} tape, with the peaks reaching as high as they did on your test recordings.
If the original recording from soundcard to soundcard sounded noticeably poorer than tape, chances are that soundcard-to-tape-to-soundcard will sound about as good as tape.
Has anyone else noticed, though, that LINE IN jacks are becoming an endangered species?
It doesn't surprise me one iota. But while we've got a perl script running, we can check for that sort of thing too. Some ISPs like to confine CGI scripts to a/cgi-bin directory, but savvy users can override this with a.htaccess file.
By the way, I'm noticing spam nowadays with "innocuous" subject lines, such as "Fwd: did you find my pictures" or "You forgot to answer". Of course they're from nobody I know, so I won't be opening them in my mail reader. But I'll certainly analyse them in case there's anything interesting in there!
So, was the mic level audio balanced, but unshielded? Would explain it completely.
I think one wire of the unshielded, untwisted pair was connected to mains earth, as the amplifier was in a metal chassis.
Anyway, interference pickup is largely a matter of accident, not design. The smallest variation in one parameter can throw out your careful calculations completely. And what causes problems in one setup can work fine in another.
PCB material is resin reinforced with either paper or glass fibres - the highest quality ones have woven glass fibres. There is a layer of copper, tin/lead solder and some kind of plastic material as a solder mask layer. Plus whatever components are attached, and any glue holding them in place. These are usually crushed and roasted at high temperature to burn off the resin and plastics, and melt the metals, which then have to undergo a secondary separation process. The process is quite wasteful of heat, unless it can be combined with a power plant.
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No, you're wrong. The 8088 has a 16-bit internal architecture, however, it only brings out 8 data lines - so "word" transfers take 2 clock cycles, but you needed only 8n one-bit-wide RAM chips and one 8-bit-wide *ROM chip for the memory. Bear in mind memory was expensive when these things reigned supreme! The 8086 requires 16-bit-wide memory, hence 16n one-bit-wide RAM chips and two 8-bit-wide *ROM chips. I think it has a compatibility mode whereby it can access memory and I/O devices in 8-bit bytes rather than 16-bit words.
What is the big deal? There may be some code in the 2.4 kernel which the courts may decide belongs to SCO, but it is highly likely that the courts will rule that SCO, by their own deliberate action, allowed that code to enter the Linux kernel and be released under the GPL; and, having done that, they can't change their minds. But there are too many variables. Remember the old saying ..... if "if"s and "and"s were kettles and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers!
The most likely outcome is that SCO's claim on the intellectual property is nullified - and SCO had better hope that nobody who has paid them licence fees decides to sue for their money back with interest.
At any rate, Linux users have a cast-iron defence: ignorance of the fact. {Ignorance of the law is a different matter. Ignorance of the law is only a defence if you are a copper, and your victim didn't know that the law didn't allow you to rough them up.} Until SCO tells us exactly which bits of the kernel are in violation of their rights - which they will need to do in order to prove anyone guilty - then we all benefit from internationally-mandated presumption of innocence.
In the absolute worst case, the 3.0 kernel will have to be re-developed from 2.2. Nobody loses anything.
I'm just wondering.
Government departments might have a need to be certain about the software they are using. If you supplied closed source software to the Government, what is to stop you from logging every keystroke or something similar, behind their backs, if they can't see the source code? There is real potential for National Security to be compromised if governments are using untrustworthy software.
So, I'm presuming that Government departments can and do mandate that software suppliers show them the source code - and, if necesary, that they compile it under appropriate supervision - otherwise they will exercise their right to shop elsewhere. After all, rules are rules and apply equally to all. So it's not as though this would favour any one company over another.
They do, don't they? Check the source code thoroughly, I mean. Don't they? Surely to goodness the government considers the real rights of the people not to be spied on or charged too much money for essential services {amongst other things} an order of magnitude more important than the supposed right of a corporation to keep secrets from its customers?
If someone who works in a Government department responsible for auditing source code of software to determine its suitability for Governmental use could let me know, this would set my mind at rest.
You don't need electricity for desalination. You can do it using solar power. There evidently is plenty of this; because if there wasn't, then you wouldn't need irrigation. I'm not going to cover the techniques because they have been extensively covered elsewhere. Just suffice it to say it's based on an old survival technique; and involves trenches, polyethylene sheeting and plastic or metal rain guttering.
Who taught you science?
Reduction is the opposite of oxidation. When one thing gets oxidised, something else gets reduced.
Classical definition: oxidation = addition of oxygen, reduction = removal of oxygen.
Modern definition, since we've discovered that oxygen is not the only oxidising agent: oxidation = loss of bonding electrons, reduction = gain of bonding electrons.
For instance, in sulphur dioxide, the sulphur has an oxidation state of IV. SO2 can bond with an O-- ion to give SO3-- {still oxidation state IV so far - there are six bonds with the oxygen, but there are two extra electrons making the -- ion} or be further oxidised to SO3 {now oxidation state VI} which can bond with O-- to give the familiar SO4-- ion. If the SO3-- ion were to lose two electrons and become sulphur trioxide SO3, it would have increased its oxidation state to VI. Remember: Oil Rig - Oxidation Is Loss, Reduction Is Gain.
Anyway, back to the point, getting energy from glucose is nothing new. You can get energy from glucose by setting fire to it. Fag-ash makes a good catalyst for lighting it; no idea which of the very many chemicals it contains the actual substance is that does the business, though. What is even less remarkable is that if you measure the energy that comes from burning a known amount of glucose to produce known amounts of CO2 and H2O, you will find it equal to the amount of energy that your body can extract from that glucose. Somebody called Hess actually managed to get this law named after themself, even though it should have been obvious that anything else would violate the First Law of Thermodynamics.
Anyone who gets hurt or killed has only themself to blame. {I'm assuming no collateral damage here - time will tell how valid that is. My guess is that a rocket probably will break up into chunks that are too small to do much harm to anything else}.
For instance, back in the early days of steam transportation, people were quite unafraid to sit astride a tank of water over a coal fire. A few burst boilers later, people began to fit manometers and pressure relief valves to steam powered machinery as a matter of course. Nobody was forcing them to be steam pioneers. They were merely following their own morbid curiosity. [side note: does any religion consider curiosity a virtue?] It cost them their lives, but you have to put that into context. How many people died in experiments with steam transportation? And was the eventual benefit to society worth it? Like it or not, the computer on which you are reading this most probably is powered by some sort of steam engine. Should we have stopped experimenting after the first time someone died? But why stop then? Perhaps we should have stopped messing about with fire the first time someone got a nasty burn. Perhaps we should never have stepped down from the trees {or out of the sea, if you believe some theories} just in case someone stepped on something nasty.
You need to grow up and deal with it. People make mistakes, they die and get hurt. It's up to the ones that are left to sort out how to really achieve the effect their predecessors were aiming for.
I've never understood the need for Samba. Microsoft's SMB implementation is a proprietary protocol and thus poorly documented, mostly from "reasonable force" reverse-engineering. It would make significantly more sense for someone to implement an NFS client for Windows.
Why would anyone want to run Microsoft SQL server on Linux, when there is already a far better relational database server available that runs just fine on Linux?
On what charge? How about computer misuse in the second degree? Since MS not only wrote the lousy software, but refused to show the users the source code so they could subject it to independent scrutiny {How is it even legal for them to hide the source code from users? What don't they want us to see?} I think you would have a pretty strong case against them.
If you have, say, You probably want the new value of $mins to be "35", not "305".
If a language was smart enough to be able to tell a string from a number without prompting, yet stupid enough to use the same operator for concatenating strings and adding numbers, you might find that "2" + "2" == "22" ! That probably isn't what you want. {Javascript is so afflicted, and I often find myself having to subtract negative numbers instead of adding. If I remember rightly, VAX/VMS could actually subtract strings, and it did use the + and - operators for strings. Gick.}
And, while your C string concatenation looks complicated, there's nothing to stop you putting it into a function - arguably, that's the whole point of C - and #including it whether or not you actually need it
Why not write to your elected representatives and propose a bill to limit the term of copyright to five years from the receipt of the first royalty payment, or five years from the date of publication if no royalty payments are rceived within that time, after which the work enters the public domain. This term should not be extensible under any circumstances and, if any technological measures are used to prevent copying, at least one unprotected copy should be placed in escrow with the relevant authorities in order that the work can actually be placed in the public domain. Circumvention of protection on a work which has, or should have, already entered into the public domain should be explicitly permitted.
The whole idea of copyright is to provide a limited term of exclusivity so you can make money from your work, in return for the promise that one day, your work will enter the public domain. Frankly, five years should be enough time for anyone to make a fair profit {which is why I think it should be counted from the receipt of the first royalty payment}; and, if you haven't made any money out of it in that time, you're never going to, so you should cut your losses.
I'll maybe rewrite this in more bill-like terms and repost it, if anyone else thinks it's a good idea.
But once one person has gone to the effort of doing it, then it's game over. Everyone then potentially has access to the information. The kind of person who spends money on hacking a cheap camera is not the kind of person who keeps information like how it was done to themself.
Also, photographs you take probably are not copyrighted, unless you actually intend for them to enter the public domain someday. But they may be your secrets. They sure as hell aren't the camera supplier's secrets.
It all depends on the ASA rating. This is a measure of how big the light-sensitive particles on the film are - which in turn determines how many of them there are, how much light you need to turn the film totally black {each particle needs the same, fixed amount} and how fine the detail will be {think of those particles as pixels}. 100 ASA film {many fine particles} takes really fine detailed pictures, but it needs a lot of light to expose it properly. This means you need a long exposure time and a wide aperture. At long exposure times, you are more prone to camera wobble; at wide apertures, you are more prone to spherical and chromatic aberration and the field of view is shallower: you're using more of the lens {so more chance for that image to get distorted and colour-fringed} and it is behaving less like a pinhole {a pinhole doesn't have a focal length, but produces a perfect, if rather dim, image at any distance}. 200 or 400 ASA {fewer, bigger particles} are easier to expose, hence they are often used in cheap cameras. 1000 ASA is good for shots of moving subjects - it's just on the crossover point between distortion due to motion and distortion due to film grain. Above this speed, the grain really starts to show - but you can get shots in poor light without using a flash.
It's all a big trade-off. The "perfect film" depends on what you're trying to photograph, how far away it is, whether or not it's moving and what the light is like. So a professional photographer may well need several different kinds of film and several different camesras. However, for holiday snaps and the like, manufacturers have already found a compromise solution that works enough of the time that people aren't complaining.
And that being said, high speed film today is less grainy than it used to be. But it will never be as good as low speed film because the laws of physics are in the way.
Yes, I know that now. And next time, I will. And, I'm guessing, a few other people will too after seeing this. All it takes is a few more poeple to do it. They might think it's a movement!
Make your own GNU/Linux distro based on kernel 2.4.20 and KDE3. Slackware would be a good starting point if only because it's so customisable {and also available in a non-installation, "live CD" format}. Have this on all the public machines, and give away copies to customers who want the Linux experience at home. But here's the good bit. You don't actually tell people it's Linux. That way, you don't risk putting them off.
When your students are surfing in Konqueror, producing documents in KWord and working figures in with KSpread and KChart, or banging out their own valid HTML in Kate and uploading it to the web with gFTP, then and only then do you tell them the awful truth: That wasn't Windows! Like some ancient TV advert for margarine or a m**t substitute, where the "victim" seems totally shocked to discover it wasn't butter or m**t, [side note: where do they get these people with no taste buds?] they don't find out till it's too late. But here's the beauty; with one of your free CDs, they can put the same software on thir home PC.
But whatever you do, you've got to integrate it seamlessly. Don't be like one of those "one book for the whole range" instruction manuals that come with a piece of cheap kit and shows you the pictures of a more expensive one so you end up wishing you'd bought that instead. Integrate the distribution with the course.
And don't even mention vi or emacs. Stay with Kate if you're running X, pico otherwise.
When I bought my Packard Bell laptop from Dixons, it came with Win XP Home. I tried to obtain a refund from Dixons, but they said I had paid nothing for the software, as it was included in the purchase price of the machine, and therefore they would not be able to refund me any money. I am sure there was a hole in their argument, but frankly I could have done without the hastle. That's always the trouble when you're arguing with an idiot.
In the end, the first CD I booted up on it was Knoppix, and I used a pencil and paper to note down the configuration information it autodetected; then I installed Debian. The guy in Dixons had suggested I should sell on my copy of XP, but had no clue as to how I might accomplish this given that the original media was actually a hidden partition on the hard drive. I suppose I could pass on the licence key code to someone installing a pirated copy of XP, but I really don't know anyone I dislike enough to suggest that they install XP.
Big respect to this guy for sheer staying power. He truly was that second mouse. Let this story be an inspiration to us all. I know that, when this laptop finally conks out and it's time to buy another, then I'll fight the Microsoft Tax all the way.
As long as they can make an infra-red version, anyway. Suppose you were leasing a house to a bunch of hippies and you suspected them of growing some happy herbs in the attic using high-powered electric lights which give off infra-red radiation. If a police helicopter with infra-red camera were flying overhead, you might get asked some awkward questions. So it would be good to use to make sure that your tenants weren't doing anything naughty. You could get an overhead infra-red image before the helicopter does, and perhaps have a quiet word with your tenants.
;-) .....} and, if that was the case, you could line the roof space with insulatuon, with reflective foil on the inside, and use an extractor fan to draw out hot air into a disused chimney. Then you could use the camera to check the effectiveness of your stray heat management measures.
Or, of course, you might be a bunch of hippies growing some happy herbs in your attic, and want to make sure you weren't putting on too much of a light show for the Old Bill.
Of course, if you had some legitimate business growing legal plants in you attic, you might want to avoid attracting unwanted attention from the authorities {and wasting their time while they could be going after evil drug barons
But isn't that pretty much what the GPL says? It doesn't preclude parallel releases under an alternative licence. Look at MySQL, for example. It is available either under the GPL, or on a proprietary licence. As successive versions of Ghostscript are released on proprietary licence, the old version gets GPL'ed.
I'd actually be all for closed source software being illegal, simple as that. You write code and you let everybody use and modify it, or you keep it to yourself and nobody uses it {though maybe I'd make a concession that you can install the software on a server machine under your control and allow others to make use of it remotely by means of client software on their machines}. No need for lawyers, either - everyone can understand what no means. So what if it puts people out of business? The abolition of slavery put people out of business, and I defy anyone to tell me that was a bad thing. The abolition of closed source software could well be the next socio-technological revolution. Wake up, people! If they won't let you look at the source code, then what the f**k are they trying to hide from you?
A simple transformer is a crude bandpass filter. It would actually work quite well, and have the side effect of breaking the ground continuity and thus reducing the potential for mains hum pickup. The main problem I can see is impedance matching. It might need a hefty R-C network to compensate for the inductance of the primary.
And you're probably right, using valves is a bit OTT. What with all that solid state stuff upstream and downstream, they'd be wasted.
Anyway, sod the theories. While all this is happening, our rights are being eroded. Who's up for doing some actual comparative testing?
You break the law in another country doing something that would not be illegal at home => you get punished. You don't break the law in another country doing something that would be illegal at home => you don't get punished.
If the US government considers non-infringing acts committed off US territory to be crimes, then it should also consider infringing acts committed off US territory not to be crimes. You can't punch a hole in one side of a coin.
You need some true analogue bandpass filtering to remove the artefacts, and ideally it wants to be implemented using instrumentation-grade op-amps and powered from a linear regulator {as opposed to a switched mode supply as used in a computer} or even rechargeable batteries. Alternatively, use a pentode as a high-gain preamp to give you several volts of headroom, passive filtering {with its inherent negative dB gain} and a triode to match the impedance back to what the line input is expecting.
If you haven't got all the kit needed to do that, try buffering via tape, which has an inherent bandpass characteristic. If your deck has a special mode for recording from FM stereo, engage that, and any noise reduction you can find. Set the level to match your favourite high-bias {chrome or metal} tape, with the peaks reaching as high as they did on your test recordings.
If the original recording from soundcard to soundcard sounded noticeably poorer than tape, chances are that soundcard-to-tape-to-soundcard will sound about as good as tape.
Has anyone else noticed, though, that LINE IN jacks are becoming an endangered species?
It doesn't surprise me one iota. But while we've got a perl script running, we can check for that sort of thing too. Some ISPs like to confine CGI scripts to a /cgi-bin directory, but savvy users can override this with a .htaccess file.
By the way, I'm noticing spam nowadays with "innocuous" subject lines, such as "Fwd: did you find my pictures" or "You forgot to answer". Of course they're from nobody I know, so I won't be opening them in my mail reader. But I'll certainly analyse them in case there's anything interesting in there!
Anyway, interference pickup is largely a matter of accident, not design. The smallest variation in one parameter can throw out your careful calculations completely. And what causes problems in one setup can work fine in another.
PCB material is resin reinforced with either paper or glass fibres - the highest quality ones have woven glass fibres. There is a layer of copper, tin/lead solder and some kind of plastic material as a solder mask layer. Plus whatever components are attached, and any glue holding them in place. These are usually crushed and roasted at high temperature to burn off the resin and plastics, and melt the metals, which then have to undergo a secondary separation process. The process is quite wasteful of heat, unless it can be combined with a power plant.