In almost any case in computers, certain products will do better in one arena while failing in another. The question is - Is it better overall with a few failures, or a failure overall with a few advantages? (It's been this way with CPUs for ages - Athlons waste P4s in most arenas, but there are a few cases where a P4 will eat an Athlon alive)
Same goes for this - Overall, Opera was faster than IE in the arena of page loads. Of five sites: Half the load time for 2. Close to half for the next. MAJOR disadvantage for one. Slight disadvantage for another. Overall, Opera wins in this (limited benchmark)
Let's not forget other factors, such as overall responsiveness (How it "feels", of course page load times are a part of this), and startup time from launch.
Most importantly - Usability on a slow system. Opera ran fine on my old P133 laptop with 64M of EDO RAM. Hell, it ran OK with only 32M RAM, when Netscape 4.x took 10 minutes to start. (NS 6.x/Mozilla - Don't even think about those bloated memory hogs).
Opera, if not the fastest graphical browser on Earth (Hard to beat Lynx.:), is up there at the top, WAY above NS/Mozilla or IE.
I don't believe the 2.4 GHz ham band overlaps with the ISM band in the USA - It's directly adjacent, I think.
The Australian (Maybe another country) 2.4 GHz ISM band is a different story - There's an article for hams on hacking old Proxim Symphony cards that said that if you send in a photocopy of your ham license, Proxim would send you a card normally only legal in Australia.
Good luck with that puny little fire extinguisher against even a medium-sized fire.
The fire department and the ambulance crews are in possession of firefighting and life support equipment that you likely cannot afford. They are also likely to be far more highly trained than you are.
Knowing your limits and when it's better to hand things off to someone who knows what they're doing when you don't is as much a part of intelligence as your own skills.
I make this point to some degree in another post, but I'd like to make it clearer here.
The "pirate radio" phenomenon is the exception, not the rule. They are the example of a small few people who are responsible enough not to interfere with other users of the spectrum. Yes, they might be unlicensed, but they (in most cases) aren't trying to interfere, which is why the FCC puts little effort into shutting them down, and the FCC might not even know about many of them. (The FCC doesn't take place too much in active monitoring - They are more like an FBI of the airwaves, investigating complaints of users of the spectrum.)
The moment one of these "pirates" interferes with a major broadcast station, the FCC will come down heavy on them.
Screw with an emergency communications frequency (Police, fire, ambulance), and welcome to a whole new ballgame... One or two complaints is all that is needed for a few FCC vans full of DF equipment and probably a few conscientious hams (who may be likely also legit users of the frequencies you interfered with - many volunteer firemen, cops, and EMTs have ham licenses) hunting you down.
OK, so you've got an argument against that point. So, how about this?
I don't know if you are married. Let's suppose you are. Your wife is having a heart attack. You call 911.
Now, how would you feel if some kid with a 35W VHF transmitter goofing around on the police and ambulance dispatch frequencies prevents any help from reaching your house (or even knowing that they're needed), and your wife dies due to lack of proper medical attention?
Or your house burns down because someone's screwing around on the fire dispatch frequencies?
Thanks to the FCC, there is recourse against such people (HEAVY fines and serious jailtime - People don't take kindly to those who mess with emergency frequencies. Penalties are usually far less for someone broadcasting pirate radio (who the FCC may even overlook because they have better things to do) or someone intentionally screwing with a broadcast station.
Without the FCC, it's chaos, and our emergency services are in the Stone Age.
There was a similar article posted on Slashdot a week or so ago.
Yes, advances in technology have greatly increased spectrum efficiency, to the point where we are nearly at Shannon's theoretical limit. But so far, there is nothing at all that indicates we have any way whatsoever of passing those theoretical limits.
Yes, cellular techniques can greatly increase capacity. But the question is - Is the complexity worth the added cost? For some systems, such as the cellular telephone system, the answer is yes. But for others (such as broadcasting), the answer is most definately no. (This may change soon - If we ever get flatrate 3G services, there's a good chance that could replace broadcasting. But that is a LONG way away.)
And let's not forget the huge installed base invested in the old technology. Throwing that all into the junkyard is not worth using newer and more efficient (but much more expensive) technologies.
One of the earlier posters (a ham, like myself) made a number of very good points too. Even with "infinite" spectrum, the FCC has to exist to regulate the airwaves somewhat to prevent interference between stations, especially malicious interference. Someone said it would be nice if their cordless phone didn't kill their WLAN equipment - How would you like it if your neighbor's WLAN equipment was wiping out your cellular calls, and you had no legal recourse whatsoever against him? That's what the FCC is here for.
Anyone who argues that the spectrum is infinite is talking BS. The spectrum itself is infinite, but the USABLE part is not. There are physical limits to which frequencies we can and cannot use. Those limits are expanding rapidly, but resources are still finite.
A final point - The increased complexity of cellular systems means reduced reliability. Their reliability is extremely high, but still, it is more likely to fail than other technologies, such as point-to-point radio, which will always have its place even though cellular phones are beginning to replace two-ways in many areas. 9/11 is an example - Despite being a theoretically higher-capacity system than "low-tech" NBFM two-way radio, the cellular system in NYC was quickly rendered useless by a combination of infrastructure damage and overloading. For at least a month and a half (I don't remember the exact time period), amateur radio (ham) operators provided a significant portion of the emergency communications capacity near the former Twin Towers.
a) Call 100 hotels to find the 10 with broadband and choose one of those b) Have a list of broadband-capable hotels and only call those 10 to begin with?
(I know these numbers are off, but you get the idea)
Most of the "voodoo" in MP3 is in the encoder. The encoder is where differences in programming will result in major differences in the sound of the MP3 file.
I think decoders have little leeway, if any, to play with. So the same MP3 will lead to the same WAV file, probably independent of the decoder.
In the past, non-nuclear EMP weaponry has been a fantasy, but there are some valid ideas on how to implement such a weapon.
Who thinks that developments such as these unmanned drones are going to lead to an increase in efforts to develop a non-nuclear EMP weapon?
In the end, could it result in warfare going backwards? (EMP renders electronic warfare and computer-controlled weaponry much more difficult to use, resulting in a return to more old-fashioned technologies?)
Similar thing for Wolfenstein (original)
on
E3 Doom III Preview
·
· Score: 2
Unlike the RIAA, the telcos accept that new technology is going to change the way they do business drastically, and trying to fight the oncoming tide of VoIP, etc. is suicide.
AT&T was the first to see the light - AT&T put quite a lot of research into VoIP techniques, believe it or not. MCI, another major telco, controls a LARGE portion of the US Internet backbone.
Why do you think all of the telcos have been branching into the ISP business? The telcos have a lot of the infrastructure needed for network backbones (Mainly dark fiber and rights to lay more cable where they already have cable/fiber), the Internet is not a threat to them, it is simply the direction their business is evolving. This is why you see telcos now becoming major large-scale ISPs - They know it is their only way to survive, and they also have the capital and infrastructure to succeed in the new market.
At one time, the telcos fought against the Internet and VoIP, but unlike the RIAA, the telcos have seen that fighting the new wave is futile.
The war you're anticipating has already happened and passed. It wasn't much of a war either, more like a small street gang firefight.
The first $10 gelatin trick requires you to have the original finger.
"Hey, let me use your finger so I can copy it and steal stuff with your prints!"
The second method that allows latent prints to be used requires more work. Still, if you have a laser printer, I'd estimate it runs only $50-100. And the costs of the trick can probably be reduced quite a bit.
As to the security issues: Prints alone = bad. Prints + PIN = Somewhat bad. But most crooks prolly aren't going to be that desperate.
It is probably best to use fingerprints as a method of correcting for the deficiencies of credit cards. i.e. verifying that the person with the card is indeed the owner.
It's probably most useful if fingerprint scanners can ever be made economical for the home user - Person makes a CC purchase online, pushes their thumb on a reader, and the image of their thumb gets hashed and sent to the CC company for verification. As a result, a CC thief has to steal the user's fingerprint in addition to their CC #. Theft of a fingerprint no longer means you've permanently lost its usefulness, as it's only used in conjunction with other methods. Your only problem is that the next time around the thief only needs to yoink your CC # - But I have a feeling repeat strikes of CC theft almost never happen.
Yes, people most definately still use PICs and their relatives (Motorola 68HC11, Intel 8051 (or is it 8052???) Atmel AVR, etc.)
They just aren't as visible to the end-user - I think I saw once that Intel makes as much money from their microcontrollers as from big CPUs - They only cost $2-$10 apiece, but are sold in INCREDIBLE volume. Microcontrollers are EVERYWHERE, and the ability to program them is a useful and fun skill. It's amazing what you can do with 1k of flash and 128 bytes of RAM. (I've seen Tetris in 16k flash/2 or 4k RAM). Heck, one of the most popular AVRs is the AT90S1200 - which has NO RAM - just flash and 32 registers.
You might want to check out Atmel AVR chips - They tend to be MUCH more powerful than PICs of the same price. The subject of which is easier to program is much more of a debate, but with C compilers like CodeVision AVR (or GNU GCC), AVR programming is EASY.
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/ - LOTS of neat AVR-based projects there. Once I get around to tweaking our webpages, you'll see my group's project there.:)
They're saying that they're not worried about the kids because they don't care, they're saying that they're not worried about the kids because kids can adapt VERY easily to new software.
Even with M$ software, it's frequent that the kids are teaching the teachers. My old high school is one such example... Even the head of our business department (The guy who ran the network) was outshone by a number of students.
What set him apart from the technical director for the district was that he at least knew what his limits were, and could accept the fact that he was best off accepting help from his students than trying to restrict them. On the other hand, the technical director for the district killed half the computers in the school by doing a mass upgrade to Win98 - Without testing it on one machine first.
My dorm had nothing of the sort, but I know someone who apparently lived on a floor where people would bring bowls of popcorn into the rooms of people playing Rainbow Six.
Screw Roger Wilco and the like - These people just opened their doors and yelled loudly.:)
While there hasn't been any official statement, the unofficial consensus is that Uncle Sam turned off SA to stunt the development of the European system. SA turns off - Much less need for an alternative.
If that was their goal, it was a success. The European program got hurt badly by the deactivation of SA.
Now, by the time it gets off the ground, the next generation of civilian GPS will be available. (I believe that there will be support for civilian dual-frequency - The current batch of satellites doesn't support it though, so it'll be quite a while.)
I'm not completely sure (as my Garmin is at home), but I believe the NMEA protocol includes timestamping. I'd be shocked if it doesn't.
It's not the microsecond accuracy that specially-designed GPS systems have, but it'll definately be accurate to within a few seconds.
Even a simple $99 Garmin eTrex could probably solve your problems, although you might want to go with a more expensive unit with an external antenna (maybe the eMap). Or you could buy one of the dedicated serial GPS modules, like the Garmin 35.
Slashdot Mirror
In almost any case in computers, certain products will do better in one arena while failing in another. The question is - Is it better overall with a few failures, or a failure overall with a few advantages? (It's been this way with CPUs for ages - Athlons waste P4s in most arenas, but there are a few cases where a P4 will eat an Athlon alive)
:), is up there at the top, WAY above NS/Mozilla or IE.
Same goes for this - Overall, Opera was faster than IE in the arena of page loads. Of five sites: Half the load time for 2. Close to half for the next. MAJOR disadvantage for one. Slight disadvantage for another. Overall, Opera wins in this (limited benchmark)
Let's not forget other factors, such as overall responsiveness (How it "feels", of course page load times are a part of this), and startup time from launch.
Most importantly - Usability on a slow system. Opera ran fine on my old P133 laptop with 64M of EDO RAM. Hell, it ran OK with only 32M RAM, when Netscape 4.x took 10 minutes to start. (NS 6.x/Mozilla - Don't even think about those bloated memory hogs).
Opera, if not the fastest graphical browser on Earth (Hard to beat Lynx.
I don't believe the 2.4 GHz ham band overlaps with the ISM band in the USA - It's directly adjacent, I think.
The Australian (Maybe another country) 2.4 GHz ISM band is a different story - There's an article for hams on hacking old Proxim Symphony cards that said that if you send in a photocopy of your ham license, Proxim would send you a card normally only legal in Australia.
5 WPM???
:)
Bah, not even that hard. I have a Tech-class license due to laziness.
Right now, that's what - a 55 question multiple choice exam that normal 7 year olds can pass (and have done so numerous times?)
I'll get my Extra one of these days. (General? Bah, why settle for that when the diff. is one more multiple-guess exam these days?)
The entertainment industry doesn't care much about the shortwave spectrum.
Oh, and the rules on shortwave are mainly set by the ITU - An international organization. Corporate influences rarely reach this far.
Good luck with that puny little fire extinguisher against even a medium-sized fire.
The fire department and the ambulance crews are in possession of firefighting and life support equipment that you likely cannot afford. They are also likely to be far more highly trained than you are.
Knowing your limits and when it's better to hand things off to someone who knows what they're doing when you don't is as much a part of intelligence as your own skills.
I make this point to some degree in another post, but I'd like to make it clearer here.
The "pirate radio" phenomenon is the exception, not the rule. They are the example of a small few people who are responsible enough not to interfere with other users of the spectrum. Yes, they might be unlicensed, but they (in most cases) aren't trying to interfere, which is why the FCC puts little effort into shutting them down, and the FCC might not even know about many of them. (The FCC doesn't take place too much in active monitoring - They are more like an FBI of the airwaves, investigating complaints of users of the spectrum.)
The moment one of these "pirates" interferes with a major broadcast station, the FCC will come down heavy on them.
Screw with an emergency communications frequency (Police, fire, ambulance), and welcome to a whole new ballgame... One or two complaints is all that is needed for a few FCC vans full of DF equipment and probably a few conscientious hams (who may be likely also legit users of the frequencies you interfered with - many volunteer firemen, cops, and EMTs have ham licenses) hunting you down.
OK, so you've got an argument against that point. So, how about this?
I don't know if you are married. Let's suppose you are. Your wife is having a heart attack. You call 911.
Now, how would you feel if some kid with a 35W VHF transmitter goofing around on the police and ambulance dispatch frequencies prevents any help from reaching your house (or even knowing that they're needed), and your wife dies due to lack of proper medical attention?
Or your house burns down because someone's screwing around on the fire dispatch frequencies?
Thanks to the FCC, there is recourse against such people (HEAVY fines and serious jailtime - People don't take kindly to those who mess with emergency frequencies. Penalties are usually far less for someone broadcasting pirate radio (who the FCC may even overlook because they have better things to do) or someone intentionally screwing with a broadcast station.
Without the FCC, it's chaos, and our emergency services are in the Stone Age.
There was a similar article posted on Slashdot a week or so ago.
Yes, advances in technology have greatly increased spectrum efficiency, to the point where we are nearly at Shannon's theoretical limit. But so far, there is nothing at all that indicates we have any way whatsoever of passing those theoretical limits.
Yes, cellular techniques can greatly increase capacity. But the question is - Is the complexity worth the added cost? For some systems, such as the cellular telephone system, the answer is yes. But for others (such as broadcasting), the answer is most definately no. (This may change soon - If we ever get flatrate 3G services, there's a good chance that could replace broadcasting. But that is a LONG way away.)
And let's not forget the huge installed base invested in the old technology. Throwing that all into the junkyard is not worth using newer and more efficient (but much more expensive) technologies.
One of the earlier posters (a ham, like myself) made a number of very good points too. Even with "infinite" spectrum, the FCC has to exist to regulate the airwaves somewhat to prevent interference between stations, especially malicious interference. Someone said it would be nice if their cordless phone didn't kill their WLAN equipment - How would you like it if your neighbor's WLAN equipment was wiping out your cellular calls, and you had no legal recourse whatsoever against him? That's what the FCC is here for.
Anyone who argues that the spectrum is infinite is talking BS. The spectrum itself is infinite, but the USABLE part is not. There are physical limits to which frequencies we can and cannot use. Those limits are expanding rapidly, but resources are still finite.
A final point - The increased complexity of cellular systems means reduced reliability. Their reliability is extremely high, but still, it is more likely to fail than other technologies, such as point-to-point radio, which will always have its place even though cellular phones are beginning to replace two-ways in many areas. 9/11 is an example - Despite being a theoretically higher-capacity system than "low-tech" NBFM two-way radio, the cellular system in NYC was quickly rendered useless by a combination of infrastructure damage and overloading. For at least a month and a half (I don't remember the exact time period), amateur radio (ham) operators provided a significant portion of the emergency communications capacity near the former Twin Towers.
I can.
Obviously other people cannot. (Whether due to addiction or business needs)
$10/day = not worth it.
Would you rather:
a) Call 100 hotels to find the 10 with broadband and choose one of those
b) Have a list of broadband-capable hotels and only call those 10 to begin with?
(I know these numbers are off, but you get the idea)
Most of the "voodoo" in MP3 is in the encoder. The encoder is where differences in programming will result in major differences in the sound of the MP3 file.
I think decoders have little leeway, if any, to play with. So the same MP3 will lead to the same WAV file, probably independent of the decoder.
In the past, non-nuclear EMP weaponry has been a fantasy, but there are some valid ideas on how to implement such a weapon.
Who thinks that developments such as these unmanned drones are going to lead to an increase in efforts to develop a non-nuclear EMP weapon?
In the end, could it result in warfare going backwards? (EMP renders electronic warfare and computer-controlled weaponry much more difficult to use, resulting in a return to more old-fashioned technologies?)
Turn on God mode
:)
Use the all-weapons cheat.
Run around level, don't kill anyone.
Lead all enemies to huge room in E1M1
Open up with chaingun.
Unlike the RIAA, the telcos accept that new technology is going to change the way they do business drastically, and trying to fight the oncoming tide of VoIP, etc. is suicide.
AT&T was the first to see the light - AT&T put quite a lot of research into VoIP techniques, believe it or not. MCI, another major telco, controls a LARGE portion of the US Internet backbone.
Why do you think all of the telcos have been branching into the ISP business? The telcos have a lot of the infrastructure needed for network backbones (Mainly dark fiber and rights to lay more cable where they already have cable/fiber), the Internet is not a threat to them, it is simply the direction their business is evolving. This is why you see telcos now becoming major large-scale ISPs - They know it is their only way to survive, and they also have the capital and infrastructure to succeed in the new market.
At one time, the telcos fought against the Internet and VoIP, but unlike the RIAA, the telcos have seen that fighting the new wave is futile.
The war you're anticipating has already happened and passed. It wasn't much of a war either, more like a small street gang firefight.
The first $10 gelatin trick requires you to have the original finger.
"Hey, let me use your finger so I can copy it and steal stuff with your prints!"
The second method that allows latent prints to be used requires more work. Still, if you have a laser printer, I'd estimate it runs only $50-100. And the costs of the trick can probably be reduced quite a bit.
As to the security issues: Prints alone = bad. Prints + PIN = Somewhat bad. But most crooks prolly aren't going to be that desperate.
It is probably best to use fingerprints as a method of correcting for the deficiencies of credit cards. i.e. verifying that the person with the card is indeed the owner.
It's probably most useful if fingerprint scanners can ever be made economical for the home user - Person makes a CC purchase online, pushes their thumb on a reader, and the image of their thumb gets hashed and sent to the CC company for verification. As a result, a CC thief has to steal the user's fingerprint in addition to their CC #. Theft of a fingerprint no longer means you've permanently lost its usefulness, as it's only used in conjunction with other methods. Your only problem is that the next time around the thief only needs to yoink your CC # - But I have a feeling repeat strikes of CC theft almost never happen.
I think the question might be, who cares?
I'm willing to pay a few extra bucks a month if it means I no longer have to switch filesharing programs every week.
Yes, people most definately still use PICs and their relatives (Motorola 68HC11, Intel 8051 (or is it 8052???) Atmel AVR, etc.)
:)
They just aren't as visible to the end-user - I think I saw once that Intel makes as much money from their microcontrollers as from big CPUs - They only cost $2-$10 apiece, but are sold in INCREDIBLE volume. Microcontrollers are EVERYWHERE, and the ability to program them is a useful and fun skill. It's amazing what you can do with 1k of flash and 128 bytes of RAM. (I've seen Tetris in 16k flash/2 or 4k RAM). Heck, one of the most popular AVRs is the AT90S1200 - which has NO RAM - just flash and 32 registers.
You might want to check out Atmel AVR chips - They tend to be MUCH more powerful than PICs of the same price. The subject of which is easier to program is much more of a debate, but with C compilers like CodeVision AVR (or GNU GCC), AVR programming is EASY.
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/ - LOTS of neat AVR-based projects there. Once I get around to tweaking our webpages, you'll see my group's project there.
They're saying that they're not worried about the kids because they don't care, they're saying that they're not worried about the kids because kids can adapt VERY easily to new software.
Even with M$ software, it's frequent that the kids are teaching the teachers. My old high school is one such example... Even the head of our business department (The guy who ran the network) was outshone by a number of students.
What set him apart from the technical director for the district was that he at least knew what his limits were, and could accept the fact that he was best off accepting help from his students than trying to restrict them. On the other hand, the technical director for the district killed half the computers in the school by doing a mass upgrade to Win98 - Without testing it on one machine first.
The teachers will have trouble learning quickly enough to keep up with the kids.
My dorm had nothing of the sort, but I know someone who apparently lived on a floor where people would bring bowls of popcorn into the rooms of people playing Rainbow Six.
:)
Screw Roger Wilco and the like - These people just opened their doors and yelled loudly.
While there hasn't been any official statement, the unofficial consensus is that Uncle Sam turned off SA to stunt the development of the European system. SA turns off - Much less need for an alternative.
If that was their goal, it was a success. The European program got hurt badly by the deactivation of SA.
Now, by the time it gets off the ground, the next generation of civilian GPS will be available. (I believe that there will be support for civilian dual-frequency - The current batch of satellites doesn't support it though, so it'll be quite a while.)
The patent is definately narrow.
If it's broad, Garmin will get toasted for prior art. See http://www.tapr.org/ - APRS and MIC-E have existed for a LONG time.
If anything, I'd say, "Anything Goes"
http://www.bit-tech.com/ and http://www.virtual-hideout.net/ have some AMAZING tricks.
Esp. the windowed HD - OMG...
I'm not completely sure (as my Garmin is at home), but I believe the NMEA protocol includes timestamping. I'd be shocked if it doesn't.
It's not the microsecond accuracy that specially-designed GPS systems have, but it'll definately be accurate to within a few seconds.
Even a simple $99 Garmin eTrex could probably solve your problems, although you might want to go with a more expensive unit with an external antenna (maybe the eMap). Or you could buy one of the dedicated serial GPS modules, like the Garmin 35.
I don't see anything about an atomic clock there. Both of them are cards for synchronization to external sources. (GPS, or an external atomic clock)