Besides, restricting the users of a program based on which OS they use goes against the spirit of the FSF - you are not allowed to restrict users or uses of the program based on the intended use - you cannot be GPL and still say "you cannot use this to develop weapons", and you cannot say "you cannot use this under WindowsXP."
It is a bad decision by the authors of the program. It won't make people ditch WinXP, it WILL restrict the distribution of the game. It goes against the ideal of freedom in coding.
This is not the way, people. Don't talk down to Windows users, don't call them lusers, don't snigger when they get the fourth virus infection this week. That doesn't win "hearts and minds". Show them the cool games they can get legally, show them the alternative mail clients that are secure, show them the other browsers. Show them, nicely, that they have a choice.
Cringely talks about how you cannot put hard disks in cars and expect them to survive. Bull. I have a standard 3.5", 30GB Maxtor in the trunk of my car, serving MP3. It's been there for a couple of years. In that time, I've driving through several states, over rough roads, train tracks, brick streets, etc. without a single bad sector developing.
Cringely forgets that the shock rating it takes to engender a head crash is pretty large, and that the suspension of the average car will convert the short, sharp shocks that would crash your drive to longer, lower g shocks that wouldn't.
Would I want a standard HD in a Jeep? NO. But in the average car, this isn't as much of a problem.
Halfnium amplifying X-Rays "exponentially"?? OK, I realize that this is a e-mag for PHB's, but come on - that reads like something straight out of Star Trek: "I know - we'll use a sheet of halfnium to amplify the X-Rays exponentially" "Shut up, Wesley"(no offense intended, CleverNickName...) Ignoring the fact that "exponentially" makes no sense in this context (after all,.9^n 1, you cannot define this without stating your units), but more importantly the energy must come from somewhere - either you are causing fission or some other form of decay in the halfnium, or you aren't getting any more energy out than you put in.
Secondly, did anyone else feel like they were reading the Great Library from any of the Civilization games - "Domestication + Iron working = Stirrup" "Bio-informatics + Genetics = Enhanced crops"?
I agree - the tech of the future will come about as combinations of what we have: I'm far too big a fan of James Burke to dispute that. But this article was "a crock of excrement, and none may abide the odor thereof".
A friend of mine from the AF said, "The Air Force is different from any other branch of service. In the other branches, the officers stay behind and send the enlisted in to fight. In the Air Force, the enlisted men stay behind and send the OFFICERS in to fight."
Thank you for your support;) I do try to be part of the signal, rather than the noise.
Your point about buying pre-rolled vs. rolling your own has merit, as well. My biggest problem with WRS is that they haven't done their job, which is to make my life as a developer easier. They didn't support my system's video card, they didn't support the network card, they don't support partitions on the hard drive, they don't support DMA on IDE. I have to do all of that. When I've had problems with their stuff, they have only ONCE been able to solve the problem for me (turning off boot from network turned off NETWORKING by default!!! you have to turn it back on with a less-than-documented define) - every other problem I've solved for myself. So what is the DOWNSIDE to using Linux? Absence of support? Bah!
The problem is that most embedded developers ARE, by job requirements, able to handle roll-your-own. WRS et. al. don't see that.
Makes me wish I owned WRS stock, so that I could sell it....
I've been a professional embedded software designer since 1987. My current project has 4 DSPs and one main processor. I have severalprojects out on the market (I have several more, but I got tired of pasting Google links). I run the gaumit from DSP algorithms to systems design to UI design to OS work.
OK, on to my point:
There's two ways to look at Embedded Linux. The first is to look at how much money is being made by companies selling Embedded Linux services - comparing Lineo with Wind River. By this standard, Embedded Linux isn't doing very well, because few companies are making a killing selling Embedded Linux tools. The second way is to look at design wins - how many projects are having Linux built into them. This gets tricker: how do you build up a list of design wins? For a commercial product like VxWorks, you just ask Wind River "How many new licensees of VxWorks were there this year?" But you cannot do that with Linux - as has been noted elsewhere most folks going to Embedded Linux just pull down RedHat, Debian or some other distro and run from there.
Now, let me shed some perspective on this. Embedded systems come in all sizes, from your smart themostat to telecom systems. If you are design a small device, with no display (or a very simple display), no network connectivity, and very small amounts of RAM and ROM, you don't want to use Linux - it's overkill. But, if you do the kind of stuff I do, where you have GUIs, gigabytes of disc storage, network stacks, printer support, scripting, and so on, you DON'T want to use something like VxWorks - they didn't have a DHCP client in their earlier version, they didn't have DNS, they don't have very good printer support, forget SMB (save if you wish to pretend to BE a printer), the only GUI they really support is Java on a frame buffer. Also, their hardware support is pretty lame - if you deviate just a little bit from the supported boards they have, you can kiss good support goodbye (their X-Scale ports don't activate the on-chip cache - farewell to half your CPU speed).
But would I go to Lineo for their package? No, not because of any intrisic failing of Lineo, but because I don't NEED to, and by the time I clear the crap with our Contracts person, I'm slipping schedule.
Believe me - I see the FUD in all my trade journals. The problem it they are geared to deal with the likes of Wind River, and they don't know how to measure something that can be downloaded free. Furthurmore, Debian doesn't buy ad space in EE Times, so it's hard for EE Times to get excited about them.
I think the biggest problem with properly giving GNU credit is the absence of a good name for that part of the system.
Consider: You find yourself seated on an airplane next to RMS. You pull out your laptop to do some work, and the system boots. Your laptop's screen isn't the greatest, and RMS cannot see what is running on it. Seeking to make friendly conversation, he asks you, "Nice machine. What are you running?" You, wishing to be fair, want to give a reasonable response. "The Gnu system, with the Linux kernel".
The problem I have is the phrase "The Gnu system" is cumbersome. I would suggest RMS try to come up with a name that could be used to refer to the Gnu components, something that can be used without being glued (gnlued???) to Linux, so that somebody running Hurd/*BSD/Windows&Cygwin could say "I am running <word> on <os>".
Besides, the existance of a Microsoft mapping site neither proves nor disproves my point - I never said Microsoft didn't have a presence in the mapping software market, just that it is not at this time a primary focus of theirs, because it doesn't lead to domination of any other market.
Funny, in one court case the defendant repeatedly played games with the court, pissed the judge off, submitted faked evidence, and when the judge expressed his opinion, he was removed from the case and a new judge assigned.
In another court case, the defendand repeatedly played games with the court, pissed the judge off, and didn't submit faked evidence, and when the judge expressed his opinion, he was upheld on appeal.
The problem with IE reporting invalid HTML is that all Microsoft products that automatically generate HTML generate invalid HTML.
Now, think about this: Joe web developer fires up Frontpage, and makes his page. He saves it, and loads IE - immediately IE pukes up half a dozen HTML errors, then starts on the Javascript....
Now, what do you think poor dim Joe will think? He'll think "What a piece of crap this FrontPage is! It doesn't work - I'll get something better"
So, since making FrontPage/Word/... generate good HTML is "hard" (for the guys at Microsoft....), the guys in the FrontPage team yelled over the wall at the IE guys, "Hey, can you make it so IE won't puke if we don't close our tables?" "Sure thing, George...."
Plus, by making the HTML so generated only work with IE, you help tie the products together (illegally extending your monopoly).
Remember, when considering a new market, Microsoft always asks themselves "And how does this help us dominate some other market?" Microsoft won't move into a market just to take over that market, they want to be able to get leverage to take over some other market too.
Example: why is it that Microsoft hasn't targeted mapping companies like Delorme for destruction? Microsoft has Streets and Trips, they could easly crush Delorme AAA MapNGo like a bug. Why don't they? Because, at this time, owning the mapping software market won't allow Microsoft to take over any other market.
So, making IE not puke on bad HTML helps Microsoft toward domination of the market for web design tools, and domination of the market for web design tools allows them to dominate the market for browsers. Doing things right doesn't.
A) you basically restated what I said. B) There can be a "Maxwell's Daemon" - it's called a voltage potential: The e-field across the gap prevents the electrons from going backward.
I've been seening reports in various trade journals (EE Times, EDN, etc.) about improved thermoelectric coolers, using micromachining to improve on the standard Peltier junction, so these guys may not be full of it.
The biggest problem with the standard Bismuth Telluride junction (like in your electric cooler chest, or your CPU cooler) is that the material doing the work has to have two contradictory properties:
It must conduct electricity
It must NOT conduct heat well
The problem is that electrical conduction involve the movement of electrons, which can carry heat with them, so most electrical conductors also conduct heat well. But if you conduct heat, you get leakage from the hot side to the cold side of the device.
And if you make the device less electrically conductive, you increase the heat generated in the device by the electric current, degrading efficiency. The biggest problem with Peltier junction coolers is that for every watt of heat you move, you MAKE ten watts of waste heat.
Now, perhaps with proper microstructuring, you could make a system in which electrons under a potential difference tunnel across a gap, carrying heat without providing a thermally conductive path back to the cold side, and perhaps you could get high cooling efficiencies out of such a device. Granted, you still have to pull the heat off the hot side of the device, but if you could (for example) have the cold side at 20C next to your CPU, and the hot side at 120C exposed to an air stream, you will move more heat into the air stream than you would from the 50C surface of a CPU that was not actively cooled.
So, what they are saying is at least plausable (unlike the "I can move video over three miles of dental floss" crap some folks have fallen for), however the best cons in the world have started from a plausible start.
I won't whip out MY checkbook until I see a real device, in a real setting, moving real amounts of heat, and can poke, prod, and probe it to my heart (and more importantly, my BRAINS) content.
Think about it - any police department has a finite staffing, usually very understaffed.
Now, imagine you are a police chief. You have five search warrents out against SomeISP.COM for stuff you feel is white-collar, victimless crimes.
On the other hand, you have five tips about meth labs.
Where do YOU send your officers?
Consider that the key part of a DoS attack is consuming all of some limited resource, be it bandwidth, sockets, Moderator points, or police officers.
Now, instead of the ??AA being able to crapflood the system with bogus warrents to be filled by (relatively) plentiful techs at small ISPs everywhere, they must be filled by (relatively) scarce police officers.
Oompa loompa doompety doo I've got another puzzle for you Oompa loompa doompety dee If you are wise you'll listen to me
Who do you blame when your kid is a brat Pampered and spoiled like a siamese cat Blaming the kids is a lie and a shame You know exactly who's to blame The mother and the father
Oompa loompa doompety da If you're not spoiled then you will go far You will live in happiness too Like the Oompa Loompa Doompety do
One of the things Slackromediocre is trying to do with Flush6 is "remoting applications".
You see, they had this wonderful insight:
What if we run the apps on a BIG computer, and then we show the output on a little computer? We'll have means to encapsulate drawing commands into a format that can be transmitted across a network. Oh, and we'll need a way of getting keystrokes and mouseclicks, too. And wouldn't it be cool if we could move audio both ways across a network link!
Of course, since nothing like this exists, we'll lock it all up into a proprietary protocol that we'll control, and everybody will have to pay us money!
What a great idea!
Of course, protocols for network transparent graphics, sound et cetera already exist, but they have that nasty four letter word in them (open).
Sarcasm aside, I am sure the intent of this is to allow Flash 6 to provide Video conferencing type applications - just click on the link and there you go.
I saw a most interesting article in InfoHurl about this - the funny thing was they showed apps being remoted to Windows, Mac-OS, and Linux. Yeah, I'll believe MacroMedia will be supporting Linux with a good Flash 6 player about the same time as BillG tongue-kisses RMS - the current Flash 5 player is MUCH slower than the Windows player on the same hardware (while strangely NOT taking all available CPU!), fails to sync video and audio, and generally is unstable (Heaven forfend somebody ELSE might want to access/dev/dsp, we'll just lock the browser up if we can't open it....)
This was one of the biggest problems with older analogue networks - they always transmitted at full power....
Wrong - at least in the case of Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS, the system still in use in the USA). In AMPS, a phone is commanded by the cell site to adjust its power as needed to maintain the connection to the cell site. In fact, you have to do this for almost any radio system with multiple transmitters (more on this later).
The problem was the granularity of the control and the rate of control - in AMPS the phone only had a very small number of power steps (like about 5) and was only commanded to change on the order of once every few seconds - in GSM, the power is adjusted much more finely (like many tens of steps) and much more quickly, and in CDMA the power is adjusted hundreds of times a second, and over hundreds of levels.
You have to do this for any system with multiple transmitters, otherwise the more powerful signals will dominate the receiver at the cell tower, and the weaker signals will be lost in the IF noise (the technical term for this is "desense"). It's bad enough with Frequency Domain Multiple Access systems like AMPS, where each conversation is on a different frequency, but it gets worse on Time Domain Multiple Access systems like GSM (because the receiver has to react in microseconds to the different power levels of each signal), and it will KILL Code Domain Multiple Access systems (where a strong signal will wipe out all the other signals - no amount of code gain will pull them out from that far under the noise floor).
Besides - I've been to the UK, and I've watched people cuss at their GSM phones as they drop calls. The double-edged (no pun intended (inside joke for folks in the cellular industry)) sword is the fact that GSM digitizes and compresses the voice, unlike AMPS - when the signal is weak, GSM will error-correct and continue with little degredation until the bit error rate exceeds the forward error correction capability, then BAM! you drop the call. In AMPS, you will hear the signal to noise ratio increase (the static in the background), and you will have an idea that you are losing the signal before you get dropped.
But the power of this lies not within the speech, but within the ability of the computer to carry out such a vague order.
Consider the following hypothetical situation:
I just released GnuDWIM - Gnu Do What I Mean. It is a Linux command line app. Here's a sample ~/: GnuDWIM Gnu Do What I Mean V0.01 - This program released under the GPL (type GnuDWIM --gpl for details). -->Book me a flight to Miami for the weekend Please wait... Your flight has been booked - AirTran flight #555, leaving at 18:20 local time Friday night, from Gate #2. Confirmation number is #512345234, billed on your Visa (BTW: your Mastercard is appoaching its limit. You should pay it off soon. bye ~:
Now, there is no speech recognition in this - it was all command line. Is this any LESS powerful that what you want?
Most people confuse Natural Language Processing (understanding commands given in normal English|French|...) and speech recognition (converting wiggles in the air into text.)
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, restricting the users of a program based on which OS they use goes against the spirit of the FSF - you are not allowed to restrict users or uses of the program based on the intended use - you cannot be GPL and still say "you cannot use this to develop weapons", and you cannot say "you cannot use this under WindowsXP."
It is a bad decision by the authors of the program. It won't make people ditch WinXP, it WILL restrict the distribution of the game. It goes against the ideal of freedom in coding.
This is not the way, people. Don't talk down to Windows users, don't call them lusers, don't snigger when they get the fourth virus infection this week. That doesn't win "hearts and minds". Show them the cool games they can get legally, show them the alternative mail clients that are secure, show them the other browsers. Show them, nicely, that they have a choice.
Cringely talks about how you cannot put hard disks in cars and expect them to survive. Bull. I have a standard 3.5", 30GB Maxtor in the trunk of my car, serving MP3. It's been there for a couple of years. In that time, I've driving through several states, over rough roads, train tracks, brick streets, etc. without a single bad sector developing.
Cringely forgets that the shock rating it takes to engender a head crash is pretty large, and that the suspension of the average car will convert the short, sharp shocks that would crash your drive to longer, lower g shocks that wouldn't.
Would I want a standard HD in a Jeep? NO. But in the average car, this isn't as much of a problem.
Halfnium amplifying X-Rays "exponentially"?? OK, I realize that this is a e-mag for PHB's, but come on - that reads like something straight out of Star Trek: "I know - we'll use a sheet of halfnium to amplify the X-Rays exponentially" "Shut up, Wesley" (no offense intended, CleverNickName...) Ignoring the fact that "exponentially" makes no sense in this context (after all, .9^n 1, you cannot define this without stating your units), but more importantly the energy must come from somewhere - either you are causing fission or some other form of decay in the halfnium, or you aren't getting any more energy out than you put in.
Secondly, did anyone else feel like they were reading the Great Library from any of the Civilization games - "Domestication + Iron working = Stirrup" "Bio-informatics + Genetics = Enhanced crops"?
I agree - the tech of the future will come about as combinations of what we have: I'm far too big a fan of James Burke to dispute that. But this article was "a crock of excrement, and none may abide the odor thereof".
A friend of mine from the AF said, "The Air Force is different from any other branch of service. In the other branches, the officers stay behind and send the enlisted in to fight. In the Air Force, the enlisted men stay behind and send the OFFICERS in to fight."
OK, give us a hint - what do you consider to be the "right" answer?
Thank you for your support ;) I do try to be part of the signal, rather than the noise.
Your point about buying pre-rolled vs. rolling your own has merit, as well. My biggest problem with WRS is that they haven't done their job, which is to make my life as a developer easier. They didn't support my system's video card, they didn't support the network card, they don't support partitions on the hard drive, they don't support DMA on IDE. I have to do all of that. When I've had problems with their stuff, they have only ONCE been able to solve the problem for me (turning off boot from network turned off NETWORKING by default!!! you have to turn it back on with a less-than-documented define) - every other problem I've solved for myself. So what is the DOWNSIDE to using Linux? Absence of support? Bah!
The problem is that most embedded developers ARE, by job requirements, able to handle roll-your-own. WRS et. al. don't see that.
Makes me wish I owned WRS stock, so that I could sell it....
First, my C.V.:
I've been a professional embedded software designer since 1987. My current project has 4 DSPs and one main processor. I have several projects out on the market (I have several more, but I got tired of pasting Google links). I run the gaumit from DSP algorithms to systems design to UI design to OS work.
OK, on to my point:
There's two ways to look at Embedded Linux. The first is to look at how much money is being made by companies selling Embedded Linux services - comparing Lineo with Wind River. By this standard, Embedded Linux isn't doing very well, because few companies are making a killing selling Embedded Linux tools. The second way is to look at design wins - how many projects are having Linux built into them. This gets tricker: how do you build up a list of design wins? For a commercial product like VxWorks, you just ask Wind River "How many new licensees of VxWorks were there this year?" But you cannot do that with Linux - as has been noted elsewhere most folks going to Embedded Linux just pull down RedHat, Debian or some other distro and run from there.
Now, let me shed some perspective on this. Embedded systems come in all sizes, from your smart themostat to telecom systems. If you are design a small device, with no display (or a very simple display), no network connectivity, and very small amounts of RAM and ROM, you don't want to use Linux - it's overkill. But, if you do the kind of stuff I do, where you have GUIs, gigabytes of disc storage, network stacks, printer support, scripting, and so on, you DON'T want to use something like VxWorks - they didn't have a DHCP client in their earlier version, they didn't have DNS, they don't have very good printer support, forget SMB (save if you wish to pretend to BE a printer), the only GUI they really support is Java on a frame buffer. Also, their hardware support is pretty lame - if you deviate just a little bit from the supported boards they have, you can kiss good support goodbye (their X-Scale ports don't activate the on-chip cache - farewell to half your CPU speed).
But would I go to Lineo for their package? No, not because of any intrisic failing of Lineo, but because I don't NEED to, and by the time I clear the crap with our Contracts person, I'm slipping schedule.
Believe me - I see the FUD in all my trade journals. The problem it they are geared to deal with the likes of Wind River, and they don't know how to measure something that can be downloaded free. Furthurmore, Debian doesn't buy ad space in EE Times, so it's hard for EE Times to get excited about them.
I think the biggest problem with properly giving GNU credit is the absence of a good name for that part of the system.
Consider: You find yourself seated on an airplane next to RMS. You pull out your laptop to do some work, and the system boots. Your laptop's screen isn't the greatest, and RMS cannot see what is running on it. Seeking to make friendly conversation, he asks you, "Nice machine. What are you running?" You, wishing to be fair, want to give a reasonable response. "The Gnu system, with the Linux kernel".
The problem I have is the phrase "The Gnu system" is cumbersome. I would suggest RMS try to come up with a name that could be used to refer to the Gnu components, something that can be used without being glued (gnlued???) to Linux, so that somebody running Hurd/*BSD/Windows&Cygwin could say "I am running <word> on <os>".
"So, how are the sales of the Aibo?"
"Lousy. People finally figured out that paying thousands of dollars for a toy dog that doesn't do very much is a losing proposition."
"Hmm.. How can we create buzz and get people with too much money to buy it again?"
"I KNOW! We'll open-source it!"
"Uhh, the judge is acting pissed. Did you see the way she looked at us when she said 'Obey the court'?"
"Yeah, how can we BS her on this?"
"Uhh, maybe we can find a link to terrorism?"
"YEA! That's it! We can't comply, because of National Security"
Harmph....
Perhaps I am paranoid, perhaps I am an old fart, but I cannot see trusting any file I got from any of the P2P systems for precisely this reason.
I would, had you given me the URL.
Besides, the existance of a Microsoft mapping site neither proves nor disproves my point - I never said Microsoft didn't have a presence in the mapping software market, just that it is not at this time a primary focus of theirs, because it doesn't lead to domination of any other market.
Funny, in one court case the defendant repeatedly played games with the court, pissed the judge off, submitted faked evidence, and when the judge expressed his opinion, he was removed from the case and a new judge assigned.
In another court case, the defendand repeatedly played games with the court, pissed the judge off, and didn't submit faked evidence, and when the judge expressed his opinion, he was upheld on appeal.
Funny, that.
The problem with IE reporting invalid HTML is that all Microsoft products that automatically generate HTML generate invalid HTML.
...."
Now, think about this: Joe web developer fires up Frontpage, and makes his page. He saves it, and loads IE - immediately IE pukes up half a dozen HTML errors, then starts on the Javascript....
Now, what do you think poor dim Joe will think? He'll think "What a piece of crap this FrontPage is! It doesn't work - I'll get something better"
So, since making FrontPage/Word/... generate good HTML is "hard" (for the guys at Microsoft....), the guys in the FrontPage team yelled over the wall at the IE guys, "Hey, can you make it so IE won't puke if we don't close our tables?" "Sure thing, George
Plus, by making the HTML so generated only work with IE, you help tie the products together (illegally extending your monopoly).
Remember, when considering a new market, Microsoft always asks themselves "And how does this help us dominate some other market?" Microsoft won't move into a market just to take over that market, they want to be able to get leverage to take over some other market too.
Example: why is it that Microsoft hasn't targeted mapping companies like Delorme for destruction? Microsoft has Streets and Trips, they could easly crush Delorme AAA MapNGo like a bug. Why don't they? Because, at this time, owning the mapping software market won't allow Microsoft to take over any other market.
So, making IE not puke on bad HTML helps Microsoft toward domination of the market for web design tools, and domination of the market for web design tools allows them to dominate the market for browsers. Doing things right doesn't.
Don't say you were born in 1999 - say you were born in 1899.
Give your address as 1600 Pensylvania Ave, or better still One Microsoft Way, Redmond.
Give your income as $1M/year or better.
A) you basically restated what I said.
B) There can be a "Maxwell's Daemon" - it's called a voltage potential: The e-field across the gap prevents the electrons from going backward.
The biggest problem with the standard Bismuth Telluride junction (like in your electric cooler chest, or your CPU cooler) is that the material doing the work has to have two contradictory properties:
The problem is that electrical conduction involve the movement of electrons, which can carry heat with them, so most electrical conductors also conduct heat well. But if you conduct heat, you get leakage from the hot side to the cold side of the device.
And if you make the device less electrically conductive, you increase the heat generated in the device by the electric current, degrading efficiency. The biggest problem with Peltier junction coolers is that for every watt of heat you move, you MAKE ten watts of waste heat.
Now, perhaps with proper microstructuring, you could make a system in which electrons under a potential difference tunnel across a gap, carrying heat without providing a thermally conductive path back to the cold side, and perhaps you could get high cooling efficiencies out of such a device. Granted, you still have to pull the heat off the hot side of the device, but if you could (for example) have the cold side at 20C next to your CPU, and the hot side at 120C exposed to an air stream, you will move more heat into the air stream than you would from the 50C surface of a CPU that was not actively cooled.
So, what they are saying is at least plausable (unlike the "I can move video over three miles of dental floss" crap some folks have fallen for), however the best cons in the world have started from a plausible start.
I won't whip out MY checkbook until I see a real device, in a real setting, moving real amounts of heat, and can poke, prod, and probe it to my heart (and more importantly, my BRAINS) content.
Think about it - any police department has a finite staffing, usually very understaffed.
.
Now, imagine you are a police chief. You have five search warrents out against SomeISP.COM for stuff you feel is white-collar, victimless crimes.
On the other hand, you have five tips about meth labs.
Where do YOU send your officers?
Consider that the key part of a DoS attack is consuming all of some limited resource, be it bandwidth, sockets, Moderator points, or police officers
Now, instead of the ??AA being able to crapflood the system with bogus warrents to be filled by (relatively) plentiful techs at small ISPs everywhere, they must be filled by (relatively) scarce police officers.
Would that not tend to limit this crap?
You see, they had this wonderful insight:
Of course, protocols for network transparent graphics, sound et cetera already exist, but they have that nasty four letter word in them (open).
Sarcasm aside, I am sure the intent of this is to allow Flash 6 to provide Video conferencing type applications - just click on the link and there you go.
I saw a most interesting article in InfoHurl about this - the funny thing was they showed apps being remoted to Windows, Mac-OS, and Linux. Yeah, I'll believe MacroMedia will be supporting Linux with a good Flash 6 player about the same time as BillG tongue-kisses RMS - the current Flash 5 player is MUCH slower than the Windows player on the same hardware (while strangely NOT taking all available CPU!), fails to sync video and audio, and generally is unstable (Heaven forfend somebody ELSE might want to access
Wrong - at least in the case of Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS, the system still in use in the USA). In AMPS, a phone is commanded by the cell site to adjust its power as needed to maintain the connection to the cell site. In fact, you have to do this for almost any radio system with multiple transmitters (more on this later).
The problem was the granularity of the control and the rate of control - in AMPS the phone only had a very small number of power steps (like about 5) and was only commanded to change on the order of once every few seconds - in GSM, the power is adjusted much more finely (like many tens of steps) and much more quickly, and in CDMA the power is adjusted hundreds of times a second, and over hundreds of levels.
You have to do this for any system with multiple transmitters, otherwise the more powerful signals will dominate the receiver at the cell tower, and the weaker signals will be lost in the IF noise (the technical term for this is "desense"). It's bad enough with Frequency Domain Multiple Access systems like AMPS, where each conversation is on a different frequency, but it gets worse on Time Domain Multiple Access systems like GSM (because the receiver has to react in microseconds to the different power levels of each signal), and it will KILL Code Domain Multiple Access systems (where a strong signal will wipe out all the other signals - no amount of code gain will pull them out from that far under the noise floor).
Besides - I've been to the UK, and I've watched people cuss at their GSM phones as they drop calls. The double-edged (no pun intended (inside joke for folks in the cellular industry)) sword is the fact that GSM digitizes and compresses the voice, unlike AMPS - when the signal is weak, GSM will error-correct and continue with little degredation until the bit error rate exceeds the forward error correction capability, then BAM! you drop the call. In AMPS, you will hear the signal to noise ratio increase (the static in the background), and you will have an idea that you are losing the signal before you get dropped.
Or Highlander II,Highlander II.5, or Highlander III
I cannot help but think of those "Infect Truth" anti-cigarette ads. Perhaps what we need to do is something along those lines?
No, I usually slam on my breaks for such idiots.
But the power of this lies not within the speech, but within the ability of the computer to carry out such a vague order.
Consider the following hypothetical situation:
I just released GnuDWIM - Gnu Do What I Mean. It is a Linux command line app. Here's a sample
~/: GnuDWIM
Gnu Do What I Mean V0.01 - This program released under the GPL (type GnuDWIM --gpl for details).
-->Book me a flight to Miami for the weekend
Please wait...
Your flight has been booked - AirTran flight #555, leaving at 18:20 local time Friday night, from Gate #2. Confirmation number is #512345234, billed on your Visa (BTW: your Mastercard is appoaching its limit. You should pay it off soon.
bye
~:
Now, there is no speech recognition in this - it was all command line. Is this any LESS powerful that what you want?
Most people confuse Natural Language Processing (understanding commands given in normal English|French|...) and speech recognition (converting wiggles in the air into text.)