What?? 1994?? Tons of tiny devices existed long before 1994 that "allows users to securely store a multitude of account numbers, PIN codes, access information and other data from multiple credit cards, check cards, identification cards and similar personal documents."
In the late 80s I purchased a credit-card calculator that had enough memory to store 50 phone numbers. Not sure about personal documents, but it was the size of a credit card, had password protection, and you didn't have to enter only phone numbers, you could type in pin numbers, etc. Pathetic by today's standards, but it was impressive at the time.
That wasn't the only device either. I'm sure any RadioShack catalog from that time would have a dozen devices that would meet the requirements listed in this patent.
doesn't really sound like they're whining about text messeging and that it should be banned, they're just stating the reason why they think sales sucked.
Course the/. crowd jumped all over this, took it waaaay out of context, and posted a dozen posts saying text messeging is going to be banned.
"The solution came after 61.40 CPU-days, corresponding to 138.25 days of computation at 1 GHz..."
sooo... they ran a distributed client on all the computers on a reasonably-sized engineering campus and came up with a answer in how many hours? In 97 there were 465 PCs on UMR's campus (more computers than women enrolled at the college), and I'd imagine they're probably all 1+ ghz by now (considering 1ghz PCs have been out for nearly 4 years now) and they may have more PCs by now.
Just because 3rd party code is responsible for half of all Windows crashes doesn't necessarily mean Windows is responsible for the other half. Bad drivers could be at fault, bad hardware, or perhaps user error.
Immortality sounds great: You live forever, while citizens of 3rd world die of starvation.
sounds sick, doesn't it?
Re:Why do people insist on getting the plural wron
on
Space Legos!
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· Score: 1
I dunno, the words "PICK UP YOUR LEGOS!" still echo in my ears twenty years later.
What do you call more than one Lego? Lego bricks? Maybe it's just a US thing, but in the US more than one Lego is refered to as "Legos", and considering how many times "legos" has been used on slashdot I'd say using the word "legos" is a slashdot thing too.
In more other news, people that watch violent movies & horror movies tend to go out and kill people, and people that watch NASCAR tend to speed more than those who do not. Scientists are shoc.... oh wait, nevermind, that's a bunch of crap.
Ok i'm confused: this guy doesn't distribute the porn, right? No website, no cd sales, no ebay? Then how did they know, or, more importantly, why even bother? He's a very small fish, so why drag his a$$ through all this? I understand it's wrong and all, but this is like finding a joint on a suspect. Most the suspect would get is overnight in jail, maybe a little bail $ and perhaps probation. That's it. This guy has been through hell: lost custody of his daughter & lost his house to his ex-wife because of this, along with spending 9 days in jail and three months in a half-way house.
This reminds me of the Kobe Bryanent case and the current rape laws: currently if a woman decides she didn't want to have sex, even after agreeing to have sex and the act has already accured, she can legally cry "rape" and the man could spend life in prison. That's incredibly stupid in my opinion, just like current kiddie porn laws.
Don't get me wrong, both kiddie porn and rape are horrible crimes, but I think the "time should fit the crime": don't give kiddie porn distributors more jail time than you would a murderer.
This will sound silly to someone who hasn't been through it... If you're paying $80k for an engineering degree, you want a dedicated piece of hardware for the task--and you DON'T want to be messing around with a stylus when the prof says "2 minutes left."
Perhaps I don't understand: as a CS major at an engineering school (Rolla actually, the school that won the 2003 American Solar Challenge) I was required to have a minor in math. I took more math than any of the engineers, including the EEs. In all honesty I used my HP 48G very little: oh sure I'd verify some calculations, but I vary rarely sat there and use it on every problem.
Some of the complaints have been about the battery life. While I'll agree the battery life of a PocketPC is no where near as good as a HP calculator a PPC is treated differently than a calculator. You'll probably sit down and sync/charge a PPC once every day or so, not like a HP where you'll replace the batteries every few months. And a PPC will last several hours on a charge, plenty of time to crunch numbers until the next overnight charging.
Just because "you're" paying 80k for a engineering degree doesn't mean you have money to blow. Think you'll find plenty of engineering students without a $1 in their pocket at many of America's top colleges. I would have been very happy to use the money I spent on my HP 48G to buy a PPC that could also play games, movies, mp3s, organize my schedule and even write notes on.
Perhaps if I took engineering classes I would have used it more, but if you're just buying it for your average Calculus I/II/III, Linear Algebra and Differential Equations classes then a PPC with HP emulator should suffice.
But people get new laptops all the time, and add WiFi cards to existing laptops (especially when they're adding wifi to their home networks), and laptops get their settings messed up all the time.
This robot is for major businesses, right? So why would a business care that the moron across the street setup a wireless network?
Every decent IT department will lock down the PCs pretty tight, no one is going to be installing a wireless NIC in their laptop or changing the settings without IT knowing it. And if IT doesn't lock down the PCs a robot isn't going to fix the problem, but perhaps replacing the IT department will.
The bulb lasts 3000 hours, or 4 hours everyday for 2 years. 4 hours may not seem like much, but remember some days you might be too busy to watch 4 hours of tv. A new bulb is ~$250 currently, but the price may be cheaper in 2 years.
Some people complain about needing a very dark room to see a projector. Remember that the closer the screen is to the projector the brighter the picture will be, so if brightness is a problem just move the projector closer to the screen. Might have to deal with "only" 55", but the ability to simply move the projector back a few feet and double the screen size is a nice capability. Here's a Lumen Guide that should help you decide how bright your projector should be, but according to the guide 1100 lumens should be enough for 72" with "windows open during daylight hours, lights that cannot be dimmed like in an open office settings".
I think you'd be hard pressed to find a 72" TV for less than $1000 anywhere else.
Palmtops are small, multifunctional, light and their screens are getting better all the time. Battery life on all bar the ones with Pocket PC is good enough for a transatlantic flight.
Actually many PocketPCs offer better battery life than your average Tungsten. Palm battery life (minutes)
Tungsten T = 271
Clie NX70V = 235
The addition of the color screens but the use of the same small batteries to maintain the small form factor has really killed battery life in PalmOS devices.
Course you could just get the b&w no-backlit Zire, which lasted nearly 1900 minutes on battery. Just remember to bring your flashlight;)
wireless networks aren't carpets that need constant cleaning: they don't develop vulnerabilities over time. It's either secure or it's not. Once the network is secure you don't need to keep checking if the network is secure, so what's the point of a robot that constantly checks wireless security?
Just because everyone that's ever visited slashdot didn't see the first article doesn't mean it should be reposted. If you turned on your news and they reported 9/11 or the shuttle accident as "new" news would you be happy? What if some guy living in a cave said "well I didn't see it the frist time"?
Sorry, just because you missed the news doesn't mean they should keep reporting the same old news.
p.s. although it says "updated 2003" many of the pictures look the same as they did last year.
why does this sound like one of the billions of incredibly revolutionary "free energy" ideas that never go anywhere or never live up to their potential? Ideas like solar panels that were suppose to provide free energy to everyone, but how many of us have even one solar cell on your house or car? How many cars run using fuel cells or hydrogen?
I don't want to sound like a pessimist, but I'm afraid this is the last time we'll hear about using our blood for energy, at least for a very long time (20+ years).
If this generates power from sugar in our body then couldn't it be used for weightloss? Instead of all that excess glucose being turned into fat it could be turned into electricity.
I know the weightloss industry is HUGE, so if these guys can burn off excess sugar (and perhaps fat) with a machine then they'll be the world's first trillionaires.
HP needs to just call it quits and make a decent graphing program (or official hp emulator) for PPCs and sell it for a reasonable price (say, $49.95). Heck of a lot cheaper/easier/more profitable than producing hardware, just ask Sega.
"...the company he chairs plans to build highly customized vehicles starting at $35,000... BTO's first car, which individuals watching the startup say will be called Auburn, is a fastback that slightly resembles the Chrysler Pacifica. "
Is this the $35,000 car? Wonder what features the base $35,000 car has? That's the average price of your semi-luxury sedan or your mid-sized SUV, so if it can offer the features of either of those vehicles for $35,000 then maybe this will succeed.
I'm hoping it'll finally be a car I can work on myself and not have to run to the dealer everytime!! Tired of oil filters being jammed way up in the engine compartment.
Think they should investigate a bargain-base turbo 4 cylinder for the street racers out there, something like that new turbo Neon SRT but looks cool (guys don't drive Neons).
(The thing that made N hold out on the backlight was battery power, by the way, not cost.)
and why was battery power such a issue? A frontlight solution was offered almost immediately after the original GBA was released that still allowed 10+ hours of playability for very little money, so what was wrong with battery power at that time?
the conspiracy-theorist in me wants to believe the GBA SP was released only 17 months after the original GBA in an effort to sell twice the units.
PS2 calibur graphics in a hand-held will either mean it's large, really expensive, or both.
You fail to realize Sony's hand-held will most likely be dealing with a quarter of resolution the PS2 games are at (320x240 vs 640x480 for decent TV), and considering the Playstation 2 dates back to early 2000 it's using hardware already over 3 years old. Obviously 3 years is forever in cpu years, so I have no doubt Sony can make a handheld unit that can handle 1/4th the resolution of the now 3+ year old playstation 2, especially considering PocketPCs have reached what your typical PC offered 3 years ago (533mhz) (the 533mhz processor isn't quite available but neither is the sony handheld so it all works out).
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In the late 80s I purchased a credit-card calculator that had enough memory to store 50 phone numbers. Not sure about personal documents, but it was the size of a credit card, had password protection, and you didn't have to enter only phone numbers, you could type in pin numbers, etc. Pathetic by today's standards, but it was impressive at the time.
That wasn't the only device either. I'm sure any RadioShack catalog from that time would have a dozen devices that would meet the requirements listed in this patent.
Am I the only one that's shocked there's a "Linux sucks" website?? Maybe I've just been brainwashed by /. but I figured everyone loved linux...
Course the /. crowd jumped all over this, took it waaaay out of context, and posted a dozen posts saying text messeging is going to be banned.
Take your own advice and RTFA.
sooo... they ran a distributed client on all the computers on a reasonably-sized engineering campus and came up with a answer in how many hours? In 97 there were 465 PCs on UMR's campus (more computers than women enrolled at the college), and I'd imagine they're probably all 1+ ghz by now (considering 1ghz PCs have been out for nearly 4 years now) and they may have more PCs by now.
Just because 3rd party code is responsible for half of all Windows crashes doesn't necessarily mean Windows is responsible for the other half. Bad drivers could be at fault, bad hardware, or perhaps user error.
sounds sick, doesn't it?
What do you call more than one Lego? Lego bricks? Maybe it's just a US thing, but in the US more than one Lego is refered to as "Legos", and considering how many times "legos" has been used on slashdot I'd say using the word "legos" is a slashdot thing too.
When on slashdot, do as the slashdotters do.
next time we see one of those teacher/student sex romps in the classrom it could have be real video?
This reminds me of the Kobe Bryanent case and the current rape laws: currently if a woman decides she didn't want to have sex, even after agreeing to have sex and the act has already accured, she can legally cry "rape" and the man could spend life in prison. That's incredibly stupid in my opinion, just like current kiddie porn laws.
Don't get me wrong, both kiddie porn and rape are horrible crimes, but I think the "time should fit the crime": don't give kiddie porn distributors more jail time than you would a murderer.
Perhaps I don't understand: as a CS major at an engineering school (Rolla actually, the school that won the 2003 American Solar Challenge) I was required to have a minor in math. I took more math than any of the engineers, including the EEs. In all honesty I used my HP 48G very little: oh sure I'd verify some calculations, but I vary rarely sat there and use it on every problem.
Some of the complaints have been about the battery life. While I'll agree the battery life of a PocketPC is no where near as good as a HP calculator a PPC is treated differently than a calculator. You'll probably sit down and sync/charge a PPC once every day or so, not like a HP where you'll replace the batteries every few months. And a PPC will last several hours on a charge, plenty of time to crunch numbers until the next overnight charging.
Just because "you're" paying 80k for a engineering degree doesn't mean you have money to blow. Think you'll find plenty of engineering students without a $1 in their pocket at many of America's top colleges. I would have been very happy to use the money I spent on my HP 48G to buy a PPC that could also play games, movies, mp3s, organize my schedule and even write notes on.
Perhaps if I took engineering classes I would have used it more, but if you're just buying it for your average Calculus I/II/III, Linear Algebra and Differential Equations classes then a PPC with HP emulator should suffice.
This robot is for major businesses, right? So why would a business care that the moron across the street setup a wireless network?
Every decent IT department will lock down the PCs pretty tight, no one is going to be installing a wireless NIC in their laptop or changing the settings without IT knowing it. And if IT doesn't lock down the PCs a robot isn't going to fix the problem, but perhaps replacing the IT department will.
The bulb lasts 3000 hours, or 4 hours everyday for 2 years. 4 hours may not seem like much, but remember some days you might be too busy to watch 4 hours of tv. A new bulb is ~$250 currently, but the price may be cheaper in 2 years.
Some people complain about needing a very dark room to see a projector. Remember that the closer the screen is to the projector the brighter the picture will be, so if brightness is a problem just move the projector closer to the screen. Might have to deal with "only" 55", but the ability to simply move the projector back a few feet and double the screen size is a nice capability. Here's a Lumen Guide that should help you decide how bright your projector should be, but according to the guide 1100 lumens should be enough for 72" with "windows open during daylight hours, lights that cannot be dimmed like in an open office settings".
I think you'd be hard pressed to find a 72" TV for less than $1000 anywhere else.
Actually many PocketPCs offer better battery life than your average Tungsten.
Palm battery life (minutes)
Tungsten T = 271
Clie NX70V = 235
PocketPC battery life (minutes)
Asus AD600 = 488
Ipaq 3970 = 368
Dell Axim X5 = 284
The addition of the color screens but the use of the same small batteries to maintain the small form factor has really killed battery life in PalmOS devices.
Course you could just get the b&w no-backlit Zire, which lasted nearly 1900 minutes on battery. Just remember to bring your flashlight ;)
Judging from the pictures it seems he was doing the installation in the dark.
wireless networks aren't carpets that need constant cleaning: they don't develop vulnerabilities over time. It's either secure or it's not. Once the network is secure you don't need to keep checking if the network is secure, so what's the point of a robot that constantly checks wireless security?
This is a LCD projector shining onto a fog. There's not many new "features" you can add to fog, not to mention the pictures don't look any different than they did last year. Here's the archieve of the first version:w ww.cs.tut.fi/~ira/wave.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20020620143522/http://
Like I said, not that different. Yes, it's clearer, but still looks like a projector on a fog to me.
Sorry, just because you missed the news doesn't mean they should keep reporting the same old news.
p.s. although it says "updated 2003" many of the pictures look the same as they did last year.
My god slashdot!! Can't you keep your stories straight?? If not SEARCH GOOGLE!!. That's how I found it again.
I don't want to sound like a pessimist, but I'm afraid this is the last time we'll hear about using our blood for energy, at least for a very long time (20+ years).
I know the weightloss industry is HUGE, so if these guys can burn off excess sugar (and perhaps fat) with a machine then they'll be the world's first trillionaires.
HP needs to just call it quits and make a decent graphing program (or official hp emulator) for PPCs and sell it for a reasonable price (say, $49.95). Heck of a lot cheaper/easier/more profitable than producing hardware, just ask Sega.
Is this the $35,000 car? Wonder what features the base $35,000 car has? That's the average price of your semi-luxury sedan or your mid-sized SUV, so if it can offer the features of either of those vehicles for $35,000 then maybe this will succeed.
I'm hoping it'll finally be a car I can work on myself and not have to run to the dealer everytime!! Tired of oil filters being jammed way up in the engine compartment.
Think they should investigate a bargain-base turbo 4 cylinder for the street racers out there, something like that new turbo Neon SRT but looks cool (guys don't drive Neons).
and why was battery power such a issue? A frontlight solution was offered almost immediately after the original GBA was released that still allowed 10+ hours of playability for very little money, so what was wrong with battery power at that time?
the conspiracy-theorist in me wants to believe the GBA SP was released only 17 months after the original GBA in an effort to sell twice the units.
You fail to realize Sony's hand-held will most likely be dealing with a quarter of resolution the PS2 games are at (320x240 vs 640x480 for decent TV), and considering the Playstation 2 dates back to early 2000 it's using hardware already over 3 years old. Obviously 3 years is forever in cpu years, so I have no doubt Sony can make a handheld unit that can handle 1/4th the resolution of the now 3+ year old playstation 2, especially considering PocketPCs have reached what your typical PC offered 3 years ago (533mhz) (the 533mhz processor isn't quite available but neither is the sony handheld so it all works out).