Anyone else remember Windows 3.1 for the Tablet PC beta'd back in the 90's? How about the Newton? How about the dying off of Palm? Stuff that was done 5+ years ago and aren't around anymore.
Now we are supposed to be all over this overpriced toy when a good laptop has dropped in price to where average joe can afford one? It's not surprising given the fact that Microsoft seems to be always a step behind now. How many more years are they going to dress up good old NT in new knickers and sell it as "new and better!".
OK... Maybe I'll give it a second look when a Linux Distro gets ported and the overall hardware price comes down from the stratosphere.
As you move away from a tower, the transmitter will automatically raise the output power towards max. Where you might only be transmitting less than 50mW to reach a tower a short distance away, you could be upwards of 500mW or more depending upon the phone and band at altitude, so the possibility of RFI is quite possible.
However, on the other hand, the aircraft avionics should reject these signals at the front end. We're not talking about a 5 buck FM radio, but mission critial instruments that go through RFI/EMI emissions and suceptance tests. The instuments and comms gear are put into a anechoic chamber and bombarded with RF at broad frequencies to check for failures. In fact military aircraft are hit with enough RF to require excluding any personnel near the testing area due to the RF radiation hazard.
I think the ultimate hazard is minimal. A overflight over a UHF television transmission tower (upwards of 2+ megawatts erp) is a greater hazard.
This is shaping up to make the VHS vs Beta wars look like a border skirmish. The real losers are going to be the consumers that suddenly find their beloved $2500 HDTV and $300 HD-DVD they just got has been suddenly obsoleted by some jerk that thinks the entire buying public is a bunch of pirates. Their attitude is that they need all these restrictions just to keep US - the public - honest? Go jump in a lake!
IMHO, the MPAA, RIAA, et. al, are going to make the consumer public so mad that they essentially put themselves out of business. What then? Add more DRM and restrictions to products claiming their plummeting sales are due piracy?
I'll just pass on HDTV until these jerks finally self-destruct and we can get rid of them.
You, sir, have hit the main problem square on the head with your last paragraph.
I deal with that type of software on an almost daily basis. Not necessarily with games programming, but in embedded applications I design the hardware for. It seems that no matter how powerful I design the platform, some bonehead seems to cripple it with crap code exactly like you describe.
Somehow what seems missed here is the cost of keeping my PC alive 24/7 just to give free bandwidth with no payback. If I have to buy the movie, put up with it's DRM, and give the person who charged me (at no discount) free server space, no deal! If I buy the DVD, I have the physical copy, can play it on anything I own, thanks to many who are equally sick of the abuse of the fair use act. I dont wear out harddrives, cook the CPU, and run up my electric bill with the 600W power supply. Plus the only way I would run a P2P server is if I can run it under Linux where I have *real* control of what is exposed to the wire.
Besides, unless you have a OC-3 fiber cabinet installed in your hall closet, it will take an eternity to download top-quality video via typical ADSL. Forget it if you only have a modem.
Oops, I forgot. We, in the US, have an inferior system of obsolete TELCO's who grudgingly gave us DSL just to protect their obsolete switches from meltdown due to all the modems.
Sheesh! Billy G. & Co. just CANT stand any kind of competition. It's a megalomanical desire to own the entire planet and subjugate all it's inhabitants into using Microsoft products. Just look at the crap going on in Massachusetts over their decision to adopt Open Document format. Open - as in published standards.
They are about to explode that their propreitary, patent encumbered Office XML format is not the standard and they are pulling out all the stops.
Sorry, Billy - we need competition. We dont need your dictating to us. Google does what it does quite well. If you can build a better "mousetrap", well fine. The market should choose.
Not that he even had the brains to produce that - he bought out Seattle Computer Products' DOS and repackaged it as PC-DOS. Oh, what a programming genius. What a super coder.
The jerk cant stand for a single penny to slip by. A convicted monopolist who got to write the terms of their punishment (yeah, right) and continues to push shoddy software on the planet, is going to charge to fix the exploits, and cant stand ANY type of competition.
Linux (and GPL software) survives because it cant be bought, grabbed by a hostile takeover, or crushed by FUD. It will continue to be a thorn in Gates' and Ballmer's sides.
[double-long king-sized rasberry]
-dh
Well that's interesting. I still remember reading one of his printed articles back in '96 that was praising OS/2. He was shouting to the world that OS/2 was vastly superior to Windoze. (Exact quote -- "OS/2 is *deep*")
I lost interest in him long ago. So you say he was trashing OS/2? Boy! What a hyprocrite! I guess he will suddenly see that he is swimming against the tide and start praising Linux.
Some dimwit must have thought he could save 2 cents on the design by not including an internal fuse on the battery pack.
However, lithium batteries are notorious for not liking water at all. The early ones back in the 80's had to be shipped in sealed containers full of fire-resistant shredded mica with a dry atmosphere, preferably nitrogen. They were very dangerous, could not be air shipped, and for gawd's sake *dont get them wet*! Those were absolutely forbidden to be used in stuff that a consumer could get hold of.
People kinda forget what kind of power density they have and the fact that the chemistry that makes it happen is hazardous and can explode.
The purpose of a cell phone is to -- now hold on to your hats -- is to make *phone calls*!
That essential function seems to be relegated to the low-priority list in the rush to cram endless features into a ever diminishing form factor.
It seems that when every "new", "improved", feature-packed phone comes out, the audio quality keeps getting worse. They're beginning to sound like cheap half-duplex speakerphones you pay $5 for at Wall-Mart.
The networks are getting crammed full of non-voice traffic, so the carriers are crushing bandwidth to accomodate the ever increasing demand. No doubt that exacerbates the situation. Maybe some of that is CDMA.
Strange how 5 years ago, my little cheap Siemens GSM phone had audio quality (both directions - incoming and outgoing) that was superior to the average landline.
Now my web-browsing, half-pda, color screen, camera, usb modem enabled phone has audio *almost* as good as my landline. That is, if you ignore inopportune duplexing, mediocre echo cancellation, and the occasional lost packet. I consider myself lucky - I got one of the premium Motorola ones on a 2-year re-up on my contract and it is better than most. It replaced one that I could hardly make calls on!
Of course, that was far better than the one I had before that which was so well "engineered" that it would lock up unexpectedly leaving a debug message (an error number and a reference to a.c file). Not just a defective unit -- the replacement failed too.
I dunno - am I asking too much? Just a good basic phone with clear audio?
Re:This could be a base for making a PSP more secu
on
Inside the PSP
·
· Score: 1
Unfortunately the silicon compound outgasses acetic acid as it cures. That will turn all the components into corroded goo.
IOTW... Dont try this. If you must, order some commercial potting compound.
When he was such the OS/2 zealot. Everything else to him was crap - especially windows. Now all of a sudden he is banging the m$ drum? Gee, when will he make up his mind.
Honestly, I never figured out why he was being constantly referred to as such an "expert".
Hmmm. Is the lawyer giving high praise to the product *their* attorney?
Ok, really. I just about snorked coffee across the room reading this article and the mentioned web site this morning. I was too busy laughing to take it seriously.
Is this an early April fools' joke? I mean, c'mon. Does anybody *really* buy into this? Add this to the gas line magnets, the cell phone antenna extenders, etc. etc. This has the makings of some really riveting infomercials:)
It makes a good humor article. I'm not going to jump into the flamewar because this was too funny.
Almost as sick as compiling KDE to run under Cygwin so that you could have a KDE desktop on your windows box..
Just 'cause you can do it, just dont make it right!
Ugh.
This should serve as proof that decimating the amateur radio frequencies (as well as others) with broadband over power lines is a very bad idea.
Amateur Radio, despite the detractors, is still very much alive and an extremely valuable asset.
Your attachment of importance to BPL over all HF circuits is, franky, ludicrous. For instance, how does an commercial aircraft coming in from overseas receive permission to enter US airspace? SSB (single side-band) HF radio. How does a small ship, like a sailboat call for help? HF SSB radio. I can keep on citing cases for the preservation of the HF spectum, but you would only accuse me of astroturfing for the cable and phone company.
I too have a FCC General Class license (earned as a First Radiotelephone back in 1973), I have an Extra Class Amateur Radio license, and I am also a senior engineer designing advanced 32 bit embedded systems. I deal with having to get designs through certification for Pt 15 A & B.
Here's the facts: BPL is a broad spectrum technology which uses an unbalanced transmission medium (power lines) that are not properly terminated, vary wildly in impedance, and are inherently noisy themselves. Just punch up AM on your car radio and drive around. You will hear noise nearly everytime you pass under a transmission line. That doesnt bode well for the BPL signal itself. Not to mention, how about all the licensed AM, HF, VHF Low band operators whose signals will be mixed in with the BPL signal.
IMHO, BPL is a nice lab curiosity, but is impractical. The transmission medium is poor, the S/N is horrible, and the complaints from interference both outgoing and incoming will kill it.
And, believe me, the military is not going to stand for a minute having their HF circuits jammed.
Oh, BTW, better receivers arent going to do anything for in-band interference. Add more sensitivity and you have louder noise.
Fiber to the curb is the answer. Light does not interfere, nor can be interfered with.
As far as the high price of broadband, remember that the phone company jumped on ADSL to save their frame switches from meltdown due to so many simultaneous dialup connections. The switches were designed to statistically handle the load, but never to guarantee that everyone on the switch could pick up their phones and dial. So, ADSL was the answer to both make them a lot of money, and save their mostly atequated equipment.
I suggest petitioning to get rid of the rediculous taxes and fees you see on your phone bill tacked onto your internet service.
Major problem here is that the IR laser used by laser target designators, etc. is not seen by the eye, and the pupil remains dilated to the surrounding light conditions.
The beam invisibly enters the eye and does damage before the person is aware of the presence, hence the IR lasers are infinitely more dangerous than visible.
The case I cited in my comment involved the plane being in a nose-down approach. The casino was dead ahead and the approach was a left traffic pattern into the runway (the runway touchdown area was to his left). He was on the final turn so his nose was quite low and much of the ground was visible. He happened to looking straight ahead with the beam hit him.
About 8 years ago I was working on a broadcast transmitter that was in a room on the roof of a apartment tower near Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi. It was shortly after dark when I emerged from the transmitter shack and I stopped to notice a C-130 on final approach to Keesler. A laser that was part of a display at one of the Casinos painted the bottom of the plane from the nose to tail. The plane wobbled as the pilot was temporarily blinded by the beam. Reading in the newspaper the next day confirmed that the pilot had been temporarily blinded by the laser and the co-pilot had finished the approach and landing.
At the time laser light shows were the rage at the newly built casinos. Several had them, and all used green lasers whose beams were panned around the sky by motorized mirrors. As these casinos were built surrounding an AirForce base, they were supposed to have safety shutoffs that, during operations, would disable the lasers upon request by the base. An investigation found that these safety devices had been bypassed by maintenance personnel, including a laser whose safety shutter had been defeated by wrapping wire around it.
Needless to say, the laser light shows were dismantled quickly and were never brought back.
Fortunately, in this case, the optics spread the beam out with distance, instead of keeping tight collumination, so the pilot did not suffer long term damage.
These lasers were in the range of 50W, not some little 5mW laser pointer. Their beams could be seen for miles orthogonally and would paint patterns on the underside of clouds over two miles up. Your 5mW laser does not have the collimation, nor the power after atmospheric absorbtion to do much after around 100 ft.
However, I must admit, lasers in the 50W range are available, would do grevious eye damage at distance, and could be used to down an airplane by blinding the pilots.
Friend, communism is dead. The Soviet Union was a failure. China is rapidly moderating. They are enjoying the infusion of money from building products for the capitalist world. It's only a matter of time before they give Chairman Mao's little red books the boot.
Please put away your book on Marx and join the 21st century. It's a brave, new world out here.
Slashdot Mirror
... we can only hope. Maybe then I might consider ATI hardware. But not until I see an actual, working Linux driver from them.
That's exactly the statement they made about XP. And we see how far that went...
Psycho. Complete raving lunatic. Megalomanical whacko.
Why the stockholders dont get rid of him, I'll never know. He gives the company a bad name.
Anyone else remember Windows 3.1 for the Tablet PC beta'd back in the 90's? How about the Newton? How about the dying off of Palm? Stuff that was done 5+ years ago and aren't around anymore.
Now we are supposed to be all over this overpriced toy when a good laptop has dropped in price to where average joe can afford one? It's not surprising given the fact that Microsoft seems to be always a step behind now. How many more years are they going to dress up good old NT in new knickers and sell it as "new and better!".
OK... Maybe I'll give it a second look when a Linux Distro gets ported and the overall hardware price comes down from the stratosphere.
-dh
As you move away from a tower, the transmitter will automatically raise the output power towards max. Where you might only be transmitting less than 50mW to reach a tower a short distance away, you could be upwards of 500mW or more depending upon the phone and band at altitude, so the possibility of RFI is quite possible.
However, on the other hand, the aircraft avionics should reject these signals at the front end. We're not talking about a 5 buck FM radio, but mission critial instruments that go through RFI/EMI emissions and suceptance tests. The instuments and comms gear are put into a anechoic chamber and bombarded with RF at broad frequencies to check for failures. In fact military aircraft are hit with enough RF to require excluding any personnel near the testing area due to the RF radiation hazard.
I think the ultimate hazard is minimal. A overflight over a UHF television transmission tower (upwards of 2+ megawatts erp) is a greater hazard.
This is shaping up to make the VHS vs Beta wars look like a border skirmish. The real losers are going to be the consumers that suddenly find their beloved $2500 HDTV and $300 HD-DVD they just got has been suddenly obsoleted by some jerk that thinks the entire buying public is a bunch of pirates. Their attitude is that they need all these restrictions just to keep US - the public - honest? Go jump in a lake!
IMHO, the MPAA, RIAA, et. al, are going to make the consumer public so mad that they essentially put themselves out of business. What then? Add more DRM and restrictions to products claiming their plummeting sales are due piracy?
I'll just pass on HDTV until these jerks finally self-destruct and we can get rid of them.
-dh
You, sir, have hit the main problem square on the head with your last paragraph.
I deal with that type of software on an almost daily basis. Not necessarily with games programming, but in embedded applications I design the hardware for. It seems that no matter how powerful I design the platform, some bonehead seems to cripple it with crap code exactly like you describe.
Thank you!
-dh
Somehow what seems missed here is the cost of keeping my PC alive 24/7 just to give free bandwidth with no payback. If I have to buy the movie, put up with it's DRM, and give the person who charged me (at no discount) free server space, no deal! If I buy the DVD, I have the physical copy, can play it on anything I own, thanks to many who are equally sick of the abuse of the fair use act. I dont wear out harddrives, cook the CPU, and run up my electric bill with the 600W power supply. Plus the only way I would run a P2P server is if I can run it under Linux where I have *real* control of what is exposed to the wire.
Besides, unless you have a OC-3 fiber cabinet installed in your hall closet, it will take an eternity to download top-quality video via typical ADSL. Forget it if you only have a modem.
Oops, I forgot. We, in the US, have an inferior system of obsolete TELCO's who grudgingly gave us DSL just to protect their obsolete switches from meltdown due to all the modems.
-dh
I'm sure you 'old timers' out there remember him? He was so warm and fuzzy. A real "patriot". Looks like that type of crap is cranking up again.
Oddly enough, there's now a movie about that period. Hmmm.
Sheesh! Billy G. & Co. just CANT stand any kind of competition. It's a megalomanical desire to own the entire planet and subjugate all it's inhabitants into using Microsoft products. Just look at the crap going on in Massachusetts over their decision to adopt Open Document format. Open - as in published standards.
They are about to explode that their propreitary, patent encumbered Office XML format is not the standard and they are pulling out all the stops.
Sorry, Billy - we need competition. We dont need your dictating to us. Google does what it does quite well. If you can build a better "mousetrap", well fine. The market should choose.
Not that he even had the brains to produce that - he bought out Seattle Computer Products' DOS and repackaged it as PC-DOS. Oh, what a programming genius. What a super coder. The jerk cant stand for a single penny to slip by. A convicted monopolist who got to write the terms of their punishment (yeah, right) and continues to push shoddy software on the planet, is going to charge to fix the exploits, and cant stand ANY type of competition. Linux (and GPL software) survives because it cant be bought, grabbed by a hostile takeover, or crushed by FUD. It will continue to be a thorn in Gates' and Ballmer's sides. [double-long king-sized rasberry] -dh
Well that's interesting. I still remember reading one of his printed articles back in '96 that was praising OS/2. He was shouting to the world that OS/2 was vastly superior to Windoze. (Exact quote -- "OS/2 is *deep*")
I lost interest in him long ago. So you say he was trashing OS/2? Boy! What a hyprocrite! I guess he will suddenly see that he is swimming against the tide and start praising Linux.
-dh
... And SYS-CON doesnt have much of a reputation right now.
Some dimwit must have thought he could save 2 cents on the design by not including an internal fuse on the battery pack.
However, lithium batteries are notorious for not liking water at all. The early ones back in the 80's had to be shipped in sealed containers full of fire-resistant shredded mica with a dry atmosphere, preferably nitrogen. They were very dangerous, could not be air shipped, and for gawd's sake *dont get them wet*! Those were absolutely forbidden to be used in stuff that a consumer could get hold of.
People kinda forget what kind of power density they have and the fact that the chemistry that makes it happen is hazardous and can explode.
Ok, one small rant...
.c file). Not just a defective unit -- the replacement failed too.
The purpose of a cell phone is to -- now hold on to your hats -- is to make *phone calls*!
That essential function seems to be relegated to the low-priority list in the rush to cram endless features into a ever diminishing form factor.
It seems that when every "new", "improved", feature-packed phone comes out, the audio quality keeps getting worse. They're beginning to sound like cheap half-duplex speakerphones you pay $5 for at Wall-Mart.
The networks are getting crammed full of non-voice traffic, so the carriers are crushing bandwidth to accomodate the ever increasing demand. No doubt that exacerbates the situation. Maybe some of that is CDMA.
Strange how 5 years ago, my little cheap Siemens GSM phone had audio quality (both directions - incoming and outgoing) that was superior to the average landline.
Now my web-browsing, half-pda, color screen, camera, usb modem enabled phone has audio *almost* as good as my landline. That is, if you ignore inopportune duplexing, mediocre echo cancellation, and the occasional lost packet. I consider myself lucky - I got one of the premium Motorola ones on a 2-year re-up on my contract and it is better than most. It replaced one that I could hardly make calls on!
Of course, that was far better than the one I had before that which was so well "engineered" that it would lock up unexpectedly leaving a debug message (an error number and a reference to a
I dunno - am I asking too much? Just a good basic phone with clear audio?
Unfortunately the silicon compound outgasses acetic acid as it cures. That will turn all the components into corroded goo. IOTW... Dont try this. If you must, order some commercial potting compound.
When he was such the OS/2 zealot. Everything else to him was crap - especially windows. Now all of a sudden he is banging the m$ drum? Gee, when will he make up his mind.
Honestly, I never figured out why he was being constantly referred to as such an "expert".
Hmmm. Is the lawyer giving high praise to the product *their* attorney?
:)
Ok, really. I just about snorked coffee across the room reading this article and the mentioned web site this morning. I was too busy laughing to take it seriously.
Is this an early April fools' joke? I mean, c'mon. Does anybody *really* buy into this? Add this to the gas line magnets, the cell phone antenna extenders, etc. etc. This has the makings of some really riveting infomercials
It makes a good humor article. I'm not going to jump into the flamewar because this was too funny.
-dh
Almost as sick as compiling KDE to run under Cygwin so that you could have a KDE desktop on your windows box.. Just 'cause you can do it, just dont make it right! Ugh.
This should serve as proof that decimating the amateur radio frequencies (as well as others) with broadband over power lines is a very bad idea. Amateur Radio, despite the detractors, is still very much alive and an extremely valuable asset.
Sorry Charlie. Your're wrong. Flat wrong.
Your attachment of importance to BPL over all HF circuits is, franky, ludicrous. For instance, how does an commercial aircraft coming in from overseas receive permission to enter US airspace? SSB (single side-band) HF radio. How does a small ship, like a sailboat call for help? HF SSB radio. I can keep on citing cases for the preservation of the HF spectum, but you would only accuse me of astroturfing for the cable and phone company.
I too have a FCC General Class license (earned as a First Radiotelephone back in 1973), I have an Extra Class Amateur Radio license, and I am also a senior engineer designing advanced 32 bit embedded systems. I deal with having to get designs through certification for Pt 15 A & B.
Here's the facts: BPL is a broad spectrum technology which uses an unbalanced transmission medium (power lines) that are not properly terminated, vary wildly in impedance, and are inherently noisy themselves. Just punch up AM on your car radio and drive around. You will hear noise nearly everytime you pass under a transmission line. That doesnt bode well for the BPL signal itself. Not to mention, how about all the licensed AM, HF, VHF Low band operators whose signals will be mixed in with the BPL signal.
IMHO, BPL is a nice lab curiosity, but is impractical. The transmission medium is poor, the S/N is horrible, and the complaints from interference both outgoing and incoming will kill it.
And, believe me, the military is not going to stand for a minute having their HF circuits jammed.
Oh, BTW, better receivers arent going to do anything for in-band interference. Add more sensitivity and you have louder noise.
Fiber to the curb is the answer. Light does not interfere, nor can be interfered with.
As far as the high price of broadband, remember that the phone company jumped on ADSL to save their frame switches from meltdown due to so many simultaneous dialup connections. The switches were designed to statistically handle the load, but never to guarantee that everyone on the switch could pick up their phones and dial. So, ADSL was the answer to both make them a lot of money, and save their mostly atequated equipment.
I suggest petitioning to get rid of the rediculous taxes and fees you see on your phone bill tacked onto your internet service.
Major problem here is that the IR laser used by laser target designators, etc. is not seen by the eye, and the pupil remains dilated to the surrounding light conditions. The beam invisibly enters the eye and does damage before the person is aware of the presence, hence the IR lasers are infinitely more dangerous than visible.
The case I cited in my comment involved the plane being in a nose-down approach. The casino was dead ahead and the approach was a left traffic pattern into the runway (the runway touchdown area was to his left). He was on the final turn so his nose was quite low and much of the ground was visible. He happened to looking straight ahead with the beam hit him.
About 8 years ago I was working on a broadcast transmitter that was in a room on the roof of a apartment tower near Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi. It was shortly after dark when I emerged from the transmitter shack and I stopped to notice a C-130 on final approach to Keesler. A laser that was part of a display at one of the Casinos painted the bottom of the plane from the nose to tail. The plane wobbled as the pilot was temporarily blinded by the beam. Reading in the newspaper the next day confirmed that the pilot had been temporarily blinded by the laser and the co-pilot had finished the approach and landing.
At the time laser light shows were the rage at the newly built casinos. Several had them, and all used green lasers whose beams were panned around the sky by motorized mirrors. As these casinos were built surrounding an AirForce base, they were supposed to have safety shutoffs that, during operations, would disable the lasers upon request by the base. An investigation found that these safety devices had been bypassed by maintenance personnel, including a laser whose safety shutter had been defeated by wrapping wire around it.
Needless to say, the laser light shows were dismantled quickly and were never brought back.
Fortunately, in this case, the optics spread the beam out with distance, instead of keeping tight collumination, so the pilot did not suffer long term damage.
These lasers were in the range of 50W, not some little 5mW laser pointer. Their beams could be seen for miles orthogonally and would paint patterns on the underside of clouds over two miles up. Your 5mW laser does not have the collimation, nor the power after atmospheric absorbtion to do much after around 100 ft.
However, I must admit, lasers in the 50W range are available, would do grevious eye damage at distance, and could be used to down an airplane by blinding the pilots.
Friend, communism is dead. The Soviet Union was a failure. China is rapidly moderating. They are enjoying the infusion of money from building products for the capitalist world. It's only a matter of time before they give Chairman Mao's little red books the boot.
Please put away your book on Marx and join the 21st century. It's a brave, new world out here.