" If you, as an end user, can overclock the 9500 to the 9700 pro for little money, then what the hell are they charging so much more money for the 9700?"
Because the 9700s can be guaranteed to operate at that clock rate. The 9500s can only be guaranteed to operate at a reduced clock rate and/or with fewer pipelines. You ignored the statistics that say that 80% of the time this mod will result in a fried card because the extra pipelines you enabled were defective.
Essentially, the 9700s are expensive because they are the "real deal". The 9500s are best described as "factory reject" 9700s that ATi figured out how to salvage from total loss - Fortunately, the design of the 9700 allows the bad circuity to be disabled, allowing the card to function properly and with guaranteed (but lower) performance, rather than going into the trash.
In the 20% of cases where the card doesn't die, I wouldn't trust it anyway, because most likely it failed QA testing for 9700 functionality in some way.
Power level isn't irrelevant. Radio waves CAN cause damage.
The way in which the damage is done is dependent on frequency. UV and gamma/X-ray radiation is high enough in energy that it can directly cause severe damage to molecules (such as our DNA) - This is why it causes cancer, even if relatively little of it is absorbed by the body.
Visible light doesn't do much damage because very little gets absorbed by the body - Most gets reflected.
RF can be VERY dangerous because unlike visible light, it can penetrate the body. In some cases (HF most likely up to VHF) it goes right through without interacting. At the UHF/microwave regions, this changes - Significant percentages start getting absorbed by the body. 2.4 GHz is particularly nasty because of a molecular resonance with H20 - Water absorbs around here readily, which is why it's not primarily a communications band and why microwave ovens operate at 2.4 GHz.
That said - Cell phones aren't dangerous, because they only emit 200 milliwatts (digital) and 600 milliwatts (analog) - That's not enough to cause significant heating. You won't feel it, you won't notice it, your body generates and dissipates far more heat on its own. Furthermore, the high-power analog mode only occurs in the 900 MHz band, never in the PCS band where absorption is higher.
Also, if someone were to be injured by excess RF, it wouldn't be cancer. Cancer modifies DNA, RF merely heats up cells to the point where they die.
It's still the case. It's easier and cheaper to come to a nice agreement than to sue someone's butt off. It also makes it easier to negotiate another agreement if they happen to later wind up infringing on another one of your patents. (Especially since in many cases that someone might happen to discover that they have patents you're infringing on, at which point they countersue and things get nasty.)
As you mentioned, one problem with MPEG is that it's hard to edit frame-by-frame, since one of the primary ways it achieves compression is to compress the difference between each frame, not each individual frame.
Another problem resulting from the interframe dependencies is that if there is too much time between frames (5-15 fps as opposed to the 25+ normally used with MPEG), then the algorithm won't be NEARLY as efficient, since it's tuned around a smaller time interval between frames. (Some other algorithms are tuned around 15ish, like many videoconferencing algorithms. OTOH, a videoconferencing algorithm designed to perform well at 30 FPS will often perform horribly at 15 FPS. This is the case with a codec I worked on at college - It had stunning quality at 30 FPS, but drop it to 15 and it started having serious issues.)
Call him. Talk to him. Once an agreement is reached, bring in the lawyers to say, "Here is a contract for you to sign saying that you agree to the terms you already agreed to verbally."
There's your paper trail.
If negotiation above fails, THEN send in the lawyers. Lawyers aren't so bad when you're expecting them and they're simply finalizing something you've already negotiated.
My dad used to work for the intellectual property division of a large company. (Now retired, and consulting in the same field.) Almost all contact with other companies started with a phone call from him or a polite letter saying in effect, "Hey, you seem to be infringing one of our patents. Let's talk about this to see if we can reach an agreement." If that failed, THEN the lawyers were called in. But in 99% of cases, the lawyers were only called in to tie up loose ends and finalize an agreement after a few rounds of negotiations between non-lawyers.
He has some excellent WiFi info, including some info on reclassifying 802.11 gear as Part 15. The solution to the IDing problem was exactly what you suggested - An occasional ICMP packet with your callsign embedded.
In addition to channels 1-5, hams have access to frequencies "below" channel 1.
To use this, unfortunately, it will either require firmware hacking or a company being nice and shipping Australian-designated 802.11 equipment to US hams who show their licens (like Proxim did)
The overlap between the ISM band and the amateur 2.4 GHz band is only partial.
a) While hams have legal rights that place Part 97 users above Part 15 users, hams are usually more intelligent about causing interference and more responsible about solving it. I.E. while a ham legally doesn't have to solve an issue of a Part 97 interfering with a Part 15 device, he usually will try to help with the problem. (Many hams will readily supply their neighbors with interference filters if they complain that the ham's HF rig is causing TV reception or phone problems.) OTOH, Part 15 users are usually assholes about fixing problems even though they are legally required to.
b) Hams can legally operate 2.4 GHz equipment outside of the ISM band. Trust me, if they're able to, they WILL to avoid the Part 15ers. Getting equipment that will operate like this can be tough though - I've only heard of it being done with Proxim equipment, who would sell you WLAN gear that was designated for the Australian ISM band (which overlaps the US amateur band completely) if you faxed them a copy of your license.
This makes me think of a location in Dark Age of Camelot. (For those that play: The area containing the road near West Downs in Albion). I call it the halfpipe...
Looking for my keys that I am holding in my left hand... (Habitually, they're always in my right hand during the trip from pocket to door/ignition and back)
The perfect excuse to get a Van De Graaf generator.
I remember in high school science, we played with one of these. We were told that removing all watches, etc. beforehand would be a good idea.
One person forgot... The watch didn't survive playtime.
One of the things I remember was forming a ring of people, with the VDG being one "person" in the ring. Interrupting the ring (or something like that) in the right way would send a jolt through EVERYONE. I'm pretty sure this little pulse was the watch killer.
a) Worm - Automatically attacks other systems, taking advantage of security holes to infect b) Virus - Usually infects executables, requires the user to run it in some form, will try to infect other "transport media" (i.e. other exectuables or in this case other MP3s) c) Trojan - Comes in an infected package (Executable, exploited MP3, etc.), normally does not spread, it just runs and does damage.
I know these aren't exactly the most accurate descriptions, these days the lines between each are somewhat blurred.
But if it's a) or b), this virus/worm could spread to places where it would be affecting "legit" users who have done nothing legal. So even if that P2P hacking bill passed (has it?), the RIAA would be overstepping their "rights" within the bill the moment the virus spread too far. A trojaned copyrighted MP3 that only infected people trying to play that one MP3 would be a different story.
Came with a GeForce4 Go (The "slightly dulled" GeForce 4) back in August. The GF4 Go has been available in Inspiron 8x00 series laptops for quite some time before that.
In fact, the upgradablity of 8000 and 8100 units to the GF4 Go made Slashdot in early summer.
And as another poster mentioned, the Inspirons have a Radeon 9000 available, for those who are into the V8-in-a-Yugo thing. (Referring to ATi's great hardware accompanied by crap drivers, not to the rest of the system.)
Also, your oh-so-wonderful 17" PowerBook only has a 1440x900something screen. The Inspiron 8000 had a 1600x1200 display available at least a year and a half ago - Probably two or more years. While the wide screen of the PBs is nice for watching movies, that 900 pixels vertical resolution is crap for anything else. (Viewing PDFs, web pages, word processing. Most games aren't catered to widescreen either.)
BTW, the GF4 Go, which is just a 4MX, cannot be considered a true GeForce 4. All it really is is a GeForce 2 running at much higher clockrates.
Don't know about their networking equipment, but I've heard lots of good things about MS joysticks, and MS makes great mice.
The scroll wheel - Microsoft's single true innovation that I can think of. I originally dismissed it as an M$ gimmick, now I go crazy with any mouse that doesn't have a scrollwheel.
I have an ancient AT&T keyboard (For all practical purposes an IBM Model M - Heck, it might even be a rebranded M. It definately has click-clack-action keys. No power buttons on this keyboard. And my machine's front is aimed back towards the wall, making the power button quite difficult to reach.
Is this a problem?
Nope. BIOS for shutdown, Wake-On-Keyboard for turning back on. If I want my machine to boot, I just mash on the keyboard with my palm.:)
Slashdot Mirror
" If you, as an end user, can overclock the 9500 to the 9700 pro for little money, then what the hell are they charging so much more money for the 9700?"
Because the 9700s can be guaranteed to operate at that clock rate. The 9500s can only be guaranteed to operate at a reduced clock rate and/or with fewer pipelines. You ignored the statistics that say that 80% of the time this mod will result in a fried card because the extra pipelines you enabled were defective.
Essentially, the 9700s are expensive because they are the "real deal". The 9500s are best described as "factory reject" 9700s that ATi figured out how to salvage from total loss - Fortunately, the design of the 9700 allows the bad circuity to be disabled, allowing the card to function properly and with guaranteed (but lower) performance, rather than going into the trash.
In the 20% of cases where the card doesn't die, I wouldn't trust it anyway, because most likely it failed QA testing for 9700 functionality in some way.
Care to point someone to proof of your claims?
t em =2701501425&category=16037
t em =3001937771&category=294
t em =3001937771&category=294
Did any of the people who modded this up bother to verify these claims?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&i
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&i
Or do a search for iOpener...
Or do a search for TiVo and find items like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&i
Power level isn't irrelevant. Radio waves CAN cause damage.
The way in which the damage is done is dependent on frequency. UV and gamma/X-ray radiation is high enough in energy that it can directly cause severe damage to molecules (such as our DNA) - This is why it causes cancer, even if relatively little of it is absorbed by the body.
Visible light doesn't do much damage because very little gets absorbed by the body - Most gets reflected.
RF can be VERY dangerous because unlike visible light, it can penetrate the body. In some cases (HF most likely up to VHF) it goes right through without interacting. At the UHF/microwave regions, this changes - Significant percentages start getting absorbed by the body. 2.4 GHz is particularly nasty because of a molecular resonance with H20 - Water absorbs around here readily, which is why it's not primarily a communications band and why microwave ovens operate at 2.4 GHz.
That said - Cell phones aren't dangerous, because they only emit 200 milliwatts (digital) and 600 milliwatts (analog) - That's not enough to cause significant heating. You won't feel it, you won't notice it, your body generates and dissipates far more heat on its own. Furthermore, the high-power analog mode only occurs in the 900 MHz band, never in the PCS band where absorption is higher.
Also, if someone were to be injured by excess RF, it wouldn't be cancer. Cancer modifies DNA, RF merely heats up cells to the point where they die.
It's still the case. It's easier and cheaper to come to a nice agreement than to sue someone's butt off. It also makes it easier to negotiate another agreement if they happen to later wind up infringing on another one of your patents. (Especially since in many cases that someone might happen to discover that they have patents you're infringing on, at which point they countersue and things get nasty.)
As you mentioned, one problem with MPEG is that it's hard to edit frame-by-frame, since one of the primary ways it achieves compression is to compress the difference between each frame, not each individual frame.
Another problem resulting from the interframe dependencies is that if there is too much time between frames (5-15 fps as opposed to the 25+ normally used with MPEG), then the algorithm won't be NEARLY as efficient, since it's tuned around a smaller time interval between frames. (Some other algorithms are tuned around 15ish, like many videoconferencing algorithms. OTOH, a videoconferencing algorithm designed to perform well at 30 FPS will often perform horribly at 15 FPS. This is the case with a codec I worked on at college - It had stunning quality at 30 FPS, but drop it to 15 and it started having serious issues.)
Call him. Talk to him. Once an agreement is reached, bring in the lawyers to say, "Here is a contract for you to sign saying that you agree to the terms you already agreed to verbally."
There's your paper trail.
If negotiation above fails, THEN send in the lawyers. Lawyers aren't so bad when you're expecting them and they're simply finalizing something you've already negotiated.
My dad used to work for the intellectual property division of a large company. (Now retired, and consulting in the same field.) Almost all contact with other companies started with a phone call from him or a polite letter saying in effect, "Hey, you seem to be infringing one of our patents. Let's talk about this to see if we can reach an agreement." If that failed, THEN the lawyers were called in. But in 99% of cases, the lawyers were only called in to tie up loose ends and finalize an agreement after a few rounds of negotiations between non-lawyers.
Do a Google search for N9ZIA.
He has some excellent WiFi info, including some info on reclassifying 802.11 gear as Part 15. The solution to the IDing problem was exactly what you suggested - An occasional ICMP packet with your callsign embedded.
In addition to channels 1-5, hams have access to frequencies "below" channel 1.
To use this, unfortunately, it will either require firmware hacking or a company being nice and shipping Australian-designated 802.11 equipment to US hams who show their licens (like Proxim did)
The overlap between the ISM band and the amateur 2.4 GHz band is only partial.
a) While hams have legal rights that place Part 97 users above Part 15 users, hams are usually more intelligent about causing interference and more responsible about solving it. I.E. while a ham legally doesn't have to solve an issue of a Part 97 interfering with a Part 15 device, he usually will try to help with the problem. (Many hams will readily supply their neighbors with interference filters if they complain that the ham's HF rig is causing TV reception or phone problems.) OTOH, Part 15 users are usually assholes about fixing problems even though they are legally required to.
b) Hams can legally operate 2.4 GHz equipment outside of the ISM band. Trust me, if they're able to, they WILL to avoid the Part 15ers. Getting equipment that will operate like this can be tough though - I've only heard of it being done with Proxim equipment, who would sell you WLAN gear that was designated for the Australian ISM band (which overlaps the US amateur band completely) if you faxed them a copy of your license.
Go fig, had mod points yesterday, nothing worth moderating, now I don't have them.
Impress is the correct word. In this case, it means that the British took US sailors off of their ships and forced them to serve the British Navy.
This makes me think of a location in Dark Age of Camelot. (For those that play: The area containing the road near West Downs in Albion). I call it the halfpipe...
Are there any open-source multiplayer combat flight simulators?
Preferably not using jets.
It's called step aerobics...
:)
But DDR would be much more fun.
Now THAT was a fun game!
:)
I wonder if there's a way to make a PC version.
Even better: Multiplayer Combat Prop Cycle. Now THAT would be cool.
He's talking about using such a device as a form of DoS attack.
It won't protect YOU specifically, but it'll make life a living hell for whoever runs the sensor you're jamming.
Looking for my keys that I am holding in my left hand... (Habitually, they're always in my right hand during the trip from pocket to door/ignition and back)
The perfect excuse to get a Van De Graaf generator.
I remember in high school science, we played with one of these. We were told that removing all watches, etc. beforehand would be a good idea.
One person forgot... The watch didn't survive playtime.
One of the things I remember was forming a ring of people, with the VDG being one "person" in the ring. Interrupting the ring (or something like that) in the right way would send a jolt through EVERYONE. I'm pretty sure this little pulse was the watch killer.
What is this attack REALLY classified as?
a) Worm - Automatically attacks other systems, taking advantage of security holes to infect
b) Virus - Usually infects executables, requires the user to run it in some form, will try to infect other "transport media" (i.e. other exectuables or in this case other MP3s)
c) Trojan - Comes in an infected package (Executable, exploited MP3, etc.), normally does not spread, it just runs and does damage.
I know these aren't exactly the most accurate descriptions, these days the lines between each are somewhat blurred.
But if it's a) or b), this virus/worm could spread to places where it would be affecting "legit" users who have done nothing legal. So even if that P2P hacking bill passed (has it?), the RIAA would be overstepping their "rights" within the bill the moment the virus spread too far. A trojaned copyrighted MP3 that only infected people trying to play that one MP3 would be a different story.
Either
a) It's signed by you
b) It's signed by someone you trust
I don't see this BIOS as being a major problem if it allows for self-signing with a), and for you to choose who is on your b) list.
i.e. if Sourceforge has a signing authority, can I add them to my list of trusted software sources? Or must all software be signed by Veri$ign?
While PAL is different from NTSC, it is not *significantly* different - The resolutions are in general similar.
Dell Inspiron 8200.
Came with a GeForce4 Go (The "slightly dulled" GeForce 4) back in August. The GF4 Go has been available in Inspiron 8x00 series laptops for quite some time before that.
In fact, the upgradablity of 8000 and 8100 units to the GF4 Go made Slashdot in early summer.
And as another poster mentioned, the Inspirons have a Radeon 9000 available, for those who are into the V8-in-a-Yugo thing. (Referring to ATi's great hardware accompanied by crap drivers, not to the rest of the system.)
Also, your oh-so-wonderful 17" PowerBook only has a 1440x900something screen. The Inspiron 8000 had a 1600x1200 display available at least a year and a half ago - Probably two or more years. While the wide screen of the PBs is nice for watching movies, that 900 pixels vertical resolution is crap for anything else. (Viewing PDFs, web pages, word processing. Most games aren't catered to widescreen either.)
BTW, the GF4 Go, which is just a 4MX, cannot be considered a true GeForce 4. All it really is is a GeForce 2 running at much higher clockrates.
Don't know about their networking equipment, but I've heard lots of good things about MS joysticks, and MS makes great mice.
The scroll wheel - Microsoft's single true innovation that I can think of. I originally dismissed it as an M$ gimmick, now I go crazy with any mouse that doesn't have a scrollwheel.
I agree.
:)
I have an ancient AT&T keyboard (For all practical purposes an IBM Model M - Heck, it might even be a rebranded M. It definately has click-clack-action keys. No power buttons on this keyboard. And my machine's front is aimed back towards the wall, making the power button quite difficult to reach.
Is this a problem?
Nope. BIOS for shutdown, Wake-On-Keyboard for turning back on. If I want my machine to boot, I just mash on the keyboard with my palm.
Number of drinks possible: 65535
Number of drinks that taste like shit: Most likely 60,000+
It's called quality control.
Not only that, but was covered on Slashdot 2-3 days ago.
TiVo Series2 with a USB Ethernet adapter (Or a Series 1 with a TurboNET card from http://www.9thtee.com/) + Linksys WET11 = Wireless TiVo