The Net Applications survey seems to be centered on desktops and personal-use devices only, while Microsoft's graphic conceivably includes OS deployment across all kinds of devices (desktops, servers, network appliances, etc.).
If you take servers into account (especially web servers and certain network appliances), aggregated Linux installations could very well top aggregated Apple OS product installations.
Also note that the Net Applications survey segregates Macs (presumably including MacOS System 9 and earlier along with OS X) and iPhones (which runs a modified Mac OS X called "iPhone OS"), whereas the Microsoft slide simply has a single "Apple" moniker.
It's an Apples v. Oranges comparison; don't read too much into it...
One would think that since we've been living in an Internet-connected society for a little over a decade (from a "Joe Average" standpoint) that people would no longer be that gullible. Alas, that isn't the case...
John Doe sees a tempting link in his email, or one served up in a web page a'la Phorm, and clicks on it. This then triggers the installation of "legalized" spyware which tracks the user's communications and browsing habits.
Amazing, the kind of tools and techniques that law enforcement and signals intelligence agencies are developing. Not that it would be hard: The botnet coders and operaters have already done all the hard work for them. Simply grab a sample of the 'bot and its controller software, and tweak it for your needs. Then, ring up the antivirus and security companies and have them modify their security applications to ignore the installed surveillance software.
Problem is, well-organized criminal organizations with the appropriate technical expertise are liable to discover the spyware anyway, and find a way to use it against the agencies responsible for its deployment (i.e., to send falsified "evidence" of their activities).
Not only that, it makes you wonder why governments blow huge amounts of cash on such technological "solutions" when the cybercooks can do the job for them for (essentially) almost nothing...
You're somewhat confused. There is a collection of UK constitutional law, though it is in multiple documents. Part of that constitutional law is the Human Rights Act, which is actually distinctly relevant to the rights of individuals and how officialdom may deal with them. (The details do vary from the US, but to claim that there is no constitution or protections is factually incorrect.)
While I will concede that is indeed the case (the UK is very often referred to as a "constitutional monarchy" in political science classes), there does not seem to be an overriding "uberdocument" in the UK analogous to the US Constitution that sets an equally high standard (by comparison) against modification and/or dilution.
In the US, the barriers to amending the Constitution are quite strong. An Amendment may be proposed by agreement among 2/3 of both Legislative Houses (the House of Representatives and the Senate) or by agreement among 2/3 of the legislatures of the individual States, but ratification of said Amendment requires agreement among 3/4 of the State legislatures or agreement among 3/4 of the Constitutional Conventions held by each State to decide the matter. Quite a tall order, given our current political climate in the US...
It doesn't matter how efficient journalistic gum-shoeing becomes, because the end product will still be subject to a certain amount of spin by the publisher.
A constitution (or, at least, the US Constitution) will remain relevant for as long as people fight for its relevancy.
Any worthy constitution is more than just a bunch of laws: It is a collection of fundamental ideals, an encyclopedia of what it means to be a human being and a civilized nation, distilled to the core and set down for Posterity.
And while its laws may become outdated, the ideals represented by it and in it do not.
It's a shame how many of our rights are being curtailed in the name of "National Security".
As far as I've been able to ascertain from the article, Mr. Kerzic was standing in an area designated for use by the public. It does not appear to be a restricted area, and from what I can see from the photograph in the article, there are no signs warning against photography by the public.
However, as bad as we may think it is here in the United States (compared to the pre-9/11 world), things are much worse in the United Kingdom. The rights of the Individual in the UK are enshrined in Common Law (i.e., customary law passed down through the ages), and not explicitly delineated in any sort of constitutional document.
And these things are happening in two of the most "open and democratic" societies the world has ever seen...
And on a side-note, here's an interesting question: Who's standing in the "restricted" zone across the tracks taking the picture of the "public" train platform?
You forget, many of the companies are limited or just plain monopolies. They don't have to care about reputation as they always know they're going to get paid.
One could argue that the telephone carrier industry as a whole falls into this category. AT&T may no longer be a monopoly vis-a-vis "Ma Bell". However, one could make a case that "Alltel + AT&T + Sprint + T-Mobile + Verizon" add up to a "collective" monopoly, or (more properly) a hegemony.
The government has some advantages as an issuer, it's huge, not going away soon, and bureaucracy helps keep the corruption away and eventually can be held accountable for what corruption there is as it's all public.
Gotta disagree on this one. Cases in point: Watergate, Iran-Contra, NSA/AT&T Room 641A (not to overuse the example), Coingate, Danngate, Rodgate... That's just a small list of US Federal and State scandals, from off the top of my head; an exhaustive list would fill many, many, many pages (did I say "many"?). The first three scandals listed all revolve around "national security" in some way, shape or form; the last three scandals mostly involve personal gain and prestige.
And while all scandals go public at some point (it's not a scandal if the public never finds out about it), the "accountability" factors do little to stem the tides of backroom dealing. Either way, governments often use "accountability and transparency" to justify actions taken in the name of "national security".
The threat of lawsuits hasn't been all that effective at reigning any of this in either.
Don't even get me started on tort reform in the US...
Private companies, especially big companies, can't be trusted...
That argument could go either way:
On one hand, private companies in the US appear to lack a certain "trustworthiness" because they don't need to file quarterly and yearly financial performance statements with the SEC. On the other hand, private companies aren't bound to the "profit-NOW!!" whims of a large pool of shareholders, so they tend to take a longer view of things and operate in a more conservative fashion.
Public companies in the US are somewhat more transparent, because they are required by law to file quarterly and yearly earnings statements with the SEC. These statements are available to the general public, so any underhanded activities by public companies are more likely to be noticed. However, public companies are driven by necessity to take a shorter-term, more immediate view with regard to cashflow because their shareholders demand instant gratification.
The United States under the Clinton/Gore administration already tried something similar to this; five words spring to mind: "Clipper, Skipjack, and Key Escrow". (If you need a refresher, I suggest the book "Crypto" by Steven Levy.)
The **last** thing I want is for my government to be the entity that issues the requisite public/private key pairs to the private institutions and companies with whom I do business. My business is **my** business - and not the government's business - until a **legitimate** search warrant or indictment says otherwise. And even then, it's still **my** business.
As the article posting indicates, SSL is built around a Chain of Trust. People buy SSL certificates from the likes of VeriSign, Thawte, Equifax, etc., because they are well-known and (ostensibly) trustworthy organizations.
I, for one, do not entirely trust my government. I don't trust VeriSign and crew all that much, either, but their reputations are a strong motivation for them to do their jobs reasonably well, and provide products that perform as advertised. To do otherwise would damage their reputations, resulting in lost customers and weaker profit margins.
Most governments, on the other hand, don't care much about their reputations, and have little regard for profit margins (just look at the US Government's annual budget deficit). They therefore have no compunction against using excuses such as "national security" and "protect the children" to provide (at best) or mandate (at worst) inferior solutions to technological problems.
Admittedly, some companies - like AT&T, for instance - are so large and well-entrenched that they sometimes bow to the mandates of government, and little heed the damage done to their reputations because of it.
But most companies are not that large, and can ill afford to lose face in the marketplace. Reputation is their bread-and-butter, so they do what's in their own best interests, which may even coincide with their customers' best interests.
I should have worded it a bit differently: "Apple filed a Patent Application, which was assigned Application No. 20080291629, for a 'liquid-cooled portable computer.'"
So the opening was semantically correct, if read literally, but in hindsight could have used some clarification.
: "By a proper encoding, one can put redundancy
: in any data set such that the original information
: can be recovered, no matter how much degradation
: there is."
Granted, but according to the related article on channel capacity, the Shannon-Hartley theorem indicates that the maximum rate of data transmission across a noisy channel degrades logarithmically as noise increases linearly (if I am reading the article correctly).
Therefore, it would seem to me that the amount of data redundancy required to cope with a given level of noise (channel degredation) increases exponentially with respect to a decreasing signal-to-noise ratio.
So, while redundant encoding schemes to ensure read integrity may exist to cope with seriously degraded storage media, they are likely to be quite expensive in terms of bits per unit of information.
Presuming that the phenomenen reported by Lysergic Acid holds true and does, in fact, apply to holographic data storage:
> if you record a hologram of a 3D object onto a photographic > plate, you can in essence reproduce a 3D image of the whole > object with any piece of that photographic plate.
Would this mean the end of "bad sectors" as we know it?
It would seem to me that if a part of the holographic storage device degrades in some way, one could simply read the data from any number of different "windows" (as described in the Wikipedia article) and get the proper result.
In fact, this could be used as a form of default error detection and correction: If, for example, the hologram is stored in a sphere, one could read the hologram from coordinates (x, y, z, lat1, lon1) and (x, y, z, lat2, lon2) -- where latitude and longitude combine with x, y, and z to create a vector from the surface of the sphere to coordinates x, y, and z within the sphere -- and see if one gets the same result. If one does not, the sphere is simply rotated so the target coordinate address is read from a different relative point on the surface. Since the surface of the sphere is large compared to the block of data stored at x, y, and z, there is bound to be a set of vectors which will result in identical blocks of data (unless the complete and total degredation of the sphere has taken place).
The trends I've been noticing lately are very disconcerting.
Think about what you get when the following technologies converge:
-- IP Traceback -- VOIP Interception -- Keylogging -- Deep Packet Analysis -- Automatic Vehicle License Plate Identification -- Public/Metro Transit Card Tracking
Everyone now has the potential to become their own "Poor Man's NSA." Even local governments, or relatively poor and/or developing countries.
Of course, if a private citizen used these tools to protect their *own* interests, they could be charged with all sorts of crimes, like illegal wiretapping, computer intrusion and abuse, etc...
Although the laptop is probably a great piece of engineering for something that has a sub-$100 price tag, the decision to go with a MIPS processor is probably going to relegate the device to niche markets - census taking, for example, or maybe something along the lines of inventory control.
The lack of official (and I emphasize "official") Flash 9 and Adobe PDF support would probably be a deal breaker for Joe Average Home and Business user.
Granted, a most of the PDF spec is now available royalty-free, and an FOSS Flash plug-in has been released (and is under continuing development), but I doubt that is going to put sway too many folk's purchasing decisions.
The MIPS processor will probably doom it forever to the realm of Geekdom...
> Most video compression techniques including MPEG set a maximum number > frames between base frames. A base frames can be decoded without any > information about previous or future frames. > > All the motion vectors or deltas are calculated against the closest > previous base frame.
Yeah, I forgot to include the whole keyframes thing... My bad. I should have said "not always."
However, the problem with keyframes is that their placement is often artificial; i.e., every 30 frames or so.
This limits the "compressability" of the stream by forcing the stream to carry a full-size frame for each second of video (at 30 frames/second). Note that I am not talking about the "lossy" compression applied to the pixels of the keyframe itself.
In some instances, the video stream could be compressed much more efficiently by analyzing the stream and including only a few keyframes during certain scenes, and using a full compliment of keyframes during more "active" scenes.
A good example of where this method could be used is the scene in Star Wars IV: A New Hope where the camera is looking at a sand dune, and Threepio is slowly revealed as he climbs the dune toward the camera from the other side. You could probably get away with just a few keyframes -- perhaps one for every 150 frames -- for the bulk of the scene. One the other hand, the space battle sequences over Endor in Star Wars VI: Return of The Jedi, being much more active scenes, would probably require one keyframe per 30 frames.
This could, of course, impose quite a performance penalty when originally encoding the video, as the encoder would need to cache quite a few frames -- let's say 1,200 frames (40 seconds at 30 frames/second) -- then analyze the chain of frames to determine how quickly the scene is changing. After the current 1,200 frame "window" is processed, the encoder would shift the window 120 frames downstream (for a 1,080 frame overlap), and repeat the process.
(Note again, for simplicity, I am not including audio synchronization as part of the discussion. Some formats require regular keyframes to keep the audio and video synchronized.)
Note that the above example is about the video component only of a single MPEG audio/video stream.
There is no reason that an encoder/decoder can't process audio in one thread and video in another, thereby using more than one core (which has already been discussed in other posts relating to this article).
The problem with MPEG encoding and decoding is that the data itself is not well suited to multi-threaded analysis.
Multi-threading is most efficient when it is applied to discrete data sets that have little or no dependency on each other.
For example, suppose I have a table with four columns -- three holding input values (A, B, and C) and one holding an output value (X). If the data in a given row of the table has nothing to do with the data in any other row, multi-threading works efficiently, because none of the threads are waiting for data from any of the other threads. If I want to process multiple rows at once, I simply spawn additional threads.
On the other hand, for data such as MPEG video, the composition of the next frame is equal to the composition of the current frame, plus some delta transformation - the changed pixels.
This introduces a dependency which precludes efficient multi-threaded processing, because each succeeding frame depends on the output of the calculations used to generate the prior frame. Even if more than one core is dedicated to processing the video stream, one core would wind up waiting on another, because the output from the first core would be used as the input to the second.
> "Next time I use an ATM with a touch screen, I am so repeating your experiment!"
Yeah...
In hindsight, I just wish I had paid more attention to what I was doing (i.e., to the region of the screen I was tapping). I was just "drumming" my fingers on the display, the way a bored person in school drums his/her fingers on a desk.
Here in the US, the SQL Slammer worm of 2003 knocked about 13,000 Bank of America ATMs off-line. All of the ATMs and their back-end transaction servers were running Microsoft products.
Other banks, like Bank One (now JP Morgan Chase), ran OS/2 on the ATMs, and OS/2 Warp Server with IBM DB2 on the transaction servers. Most of the banks who used OS/2 and DB2 to handle their ATM transactions weathered the storm nicely...
Also, a few months ago I stopped at a bank machine to withdraw some cash.
So I entered my PIN and withdrawal amount. While waiting for the magic money machine to do its thing, I idly tapped my fingers in random patterns on the touch screen.
Suddenly, a standard Windows XP taskbar and Start button appeared.
Being curious, I tapped the Start button. Kinda freaked me out when a complete Start Menu appeared. Everything was there, including Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Windows Media Player.
I can't believe that neither the ATM machine manufacturer nor the bank put any effort into building a custom, stripped-down image to run the bank's cash machines...
A good chunk of the Command and Control systems on most modern (or most recently refitted) naval vessels in the United States' inventory run on Windows technology.
It kinda gives me the shivers knowing that one of our ships could be sunk by an "inbound" because the point defense system is suffering a BSOD...
> "... but because nearly everything we use in our daily lives is manufactured using some form of petroleum/oil."
This is why we need to
1. quit using oil for a fuel source, because we'll need it for other things.
and
2. stop manufacturing thermoset plastics which are not re-"meltable" (like vulcanized rubber, which is used in tires, and polyimides, which are used to make printed circuit boards), and develop better thermoplastics which *are* re-meltable to take their place (like the newer variants of polybutadiene).
Slashdot Mirror
The Net Applications survey seems to be centered on desktops and personal-use devices only, while Microsoft's graphic conceivably includes OS deployment across all kinds of devices (desktops, servers, network appliances, etc.).
If you take servers into account (especially web servers and certain network appliances), aggregated Linux installations could very well top aggregated Apple OS product installations.
Also note that the Net Applications survey segregates Macs (presumably including MacOS System 9 and earlier along with OS X) and iPhones (which runs a modified Mac OS X called "iPhone OS"), whereas the Microsoft slide simply has a single "Apple" moniker.
It's an Apples v. Oranges comparison; don't read too much into it...
One would think that since we've been living in an Internet-connected society for a little over a decade (from a "Joe Average" standpoint) that people would no longer be that gullible. Alas, that isn't the case...
John Doe sees a tempting link in his email, or one served up in a web page a'la Phorm, and clicks on it. This then triggers the installation of "legalized" spyware which tracks the user's communications and browsing habits.
Amazing, the kind of tools and techniques that law enforcement and signals intelligence agencies are developing. Not that it would be hard: The botnet coders and operaters have already done all the hard work for them. Simply grab a sample of the 'bot and its controller software, and tweak it for your needs. Then, ring up the antivirus and security companies and have them modify their security applications to ignore the installed surveillance software.
Problem is, well-organized criminal organizations with the appropriate technical expertise are liable to discover the spyware anyway, and find a way to use it against the agencies responsible for its deployment (i.e., to send falsified "evidence" of their activities).
Not only that, it makes you wonder why governments blow huge amounts of cash on such technological "solutions" when the cybercooks can do the job for them for (essentially) almost nothing...
You're somewhat confused. There is a collection of UK constitutional law, though it is in multiple documents. Part of that constitutional law is the Human Rights Act, which is actually distinctly relevant to the rights of individuals and how officialdom may deal with them. (The details do vary from the US, but to claim that there is no constitution or protections is factually incorrect.)
While I will concede that is indeed the case (the UK is very often referred to as a "constitutional monarchy" in political science classes), there does not seem to be an overriding "uberdocument" in the UK analogous to the US Constitution that sets an equally high standard (by comparison) against modification and/or dilution.
In the US, the barriers to amending the Constitution are quite strong. An Amendment may be proposed by agreement among 2/3 of both Legislative Houses (the House of Representatives and the Senate) or by agreement among 2/3 of the legislatures of the individual States, but ratification of said Amendment requires agreement among 3/4 of the State legislatures or agreement among 3/4 of the Constitutional Conventions held by each State to decide the matter. Quite a tall order, given our current political climate in the US...
By contrast, it seems that the barriers to the modification or dilution of ordinances within the collected body of "constitutional" law in the UK are much lower.
No, it just means they will shove the statistics with which they don't agree back up their asses where the sun don't shine.
Out of sight, out of mind...
It doesn't matter how efficient journalistic gum-shoeing becomes, because the end product will still be subject to a certain amount of spin by the publisher.
A constitution (or, at least, the US Constitution) will remain relevant for as long as people fight for its relevancy.
Any worthy constitution is more than just a bunch of laws: It is a collection of fundamental ideals, an encyclopedia of what it means to be a human being and a civilized nation, distilled to the core and set down for Posterity.
And while its laws may become outdated, the ideals represented by it and in it do not.
"I move freely 'bout Greenwich 'cause my Copyright's finiched... I'm Popeye the Sailor Man [Whoot-Whoot!]"
It's a shame how many of our rights are being curtailed in the name of "National Security".
As far as I've been able to ascertain from the article, Mr. Kerzic was standing in an area designated for use by the public. It does not appear to be a restricted area, and from what I can see from the photograph in the article, there are no signs warning against photography by the public.
However, as bad as we may think it is here in the United States (compared to the pre-9/11 world), things are much worse in the United Kingdom. The rights of the Individual in the UK are enshrined in Common Law (i.e., customary law passed down through the ages), and not explicitly delineated in any sort of constitutional document.
For example, in the US, we have a Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing the right against self-incrimination. A recent court case implies that this right includes encryption keys: If a law enforcement agency impounds your laptop for analysis, but can't get anything out of it because the contents have been encrypted, too bad for them. Handing over the encryption key would be a form of self-incrimination, so you don't have to do it.
On the other hand, laws, ordinances, and Police reactions regarding individual freedoms can and often do change at a whim, depending on what is expedient at the time (8th paragraph, about half-way down). In addition, since the right against self-incrimination is based on Common Law, and not written as an explicit right, ordinances like the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act can easily curtail and eliminate such rights. As usual, some groups say that even these powers do not go far enough, invoking the familiar mantra of "National Security".
And these things are happening in two of the most "open and democratic" societies the world has ever seen...
And on a side-note, here's an interesting question: Who's standing in the "restricted" zone across the tracks taking the picture of the "public" train platform?
You forget, many of the companies are limited or just plain monopolies. They don't have to care about reputation as they always know they're going to get paid.
One could argue that the telephone carrier industry as a whole falls into this category. AT&T may no longer be a monopoly vis-a-vis "Ma Bell". However, one could make a case that "Alltel + AT&T + Sprint + T-Mobile + Verizon" add up to a "collective" monopoly, or (more properly) a hegemony.
The government has some advantages as an issuer, it's huge, not going away soon, and bureaucracy helps keep the corruption away and eventually can be held accountable for what corruption there is as it's all public.
Gotta disagree on this one. Cases in point: Watergate, Iran-Contra, NSA/AT&T Room 641A (not to overuse the example), Coingate, Danngate, Rodgate... That's just a small list of US Federal and State scandals, from off the top of my head; an exhaustive list would fill many, many, many pages (did I say "many"?). The first three scandals listed all revolve around "national security" in some way, shape or form; the last three scandals mostly involve personal gain and prestige.
And while all scandals go public at some point (it's not a scandal if the public never finds out about it), the "accountability" factors do little to stem the tides of backroom dealing. Either way, governments often use "accountability and transparency" to justify actions taken in the name of "national security".
The threat of lawsuits hasn't been all that effective at reigning any of this in either.
Don't even get me started on tort reform in the US...
Private companies, especially big companies, can't be trusted...
That argument could go either way: On one hand, private companies in the US appear to lack a certain "trustworthiness" because they don't need to file quarterly and yearly financial performance statements with the SEC. On the other hand, private companies aren't bound to the "profit-NOW!!" whims of a large pool of shareholders, so they tend to take a longer view of things and operate in a more conservative fashion.
Public companies in the US are somewhat more transparent, because they are required by law to file quarterly and yearly earnings statements with the SEC. These statements are available to the general public, so any underhanded activities by public companies are more likely to be noticed. However, public companies are driven by necessity to take a shorter-term, more immediate view with regard to cashflow because their shareholders demand instant gratification.
The United States under the Clinton/Gore administration already tried something similar to this; five words spring to mind: "Clipper, Skipjack, and Key Escrow". (If you need a refresher, I suggest the book "Crypto" by Steven Levy.)
The **last** thing I want is for my government to be the entity that issues the requisite public/private key pairs to the private institutions and companies with whom I do business. My business is **my** business - and not the government's business - until a **legitimate** search warrant or indictment says otherwise. And even then, it's still **my** business.
As the article posting indicates, SSL is built around a Chain of Trust. People buy SSL certificates from the likes of VeriSign, Thawte, Equifax, etc., because they are well-known and (ostensibly) trustworthy organizations.
I, for one, do not entirely trust my government. I don't trust VeriSign and crew all that much, either, but their reputations are a strong motivation for them to do their jobs reasonably well, and provide products that perform as advertised. To do otherwise would damage their reputations, resulting in lost customers and weaker profit margins.
Most governments, on the other hand, don't care much about their reputations, and have little regard for profit margins (just look at the US Government's annual budget deficit). They therefore have no compunction against using excuses such as "national security" and "protect the children" to provide (at best) or mandate (at worst) inferior solutions to technological problems.
Admittedly, some companies - like AT&T, for instance - are so large and well-entrenched that they sometimes bow to the mandates of government, and little heed the damage done to their reputations because of it.
But most companies are not that large, and can ill afford to lose face in the marketplace. Reputation is their bread-and-butter, so they do what's in their own best interests, which may even coincide with their customers' best interests.
It's already out there... It's called an "iPhone."
I should have worded it a bit differently: "Apple filed a Patent Application, which was assigned Application No. 20080291629, for a 'liquid-cooled portable computer.'"
So the opening was semantically correct, if read literally, but in hindsight could have used some clarification.
Kudos...
Mangu wrote:
: "By a proper encoding, one can put redundancy
: in any data set such that the original information
: can be recovered, no matter how much degradation
: there is."
Granted, but according to the related article on channel capacity, the Shannon-Hartley theorem indicates that the maximum rate of data transmission across a noisy channel degrades logarithmically as noise increases linearly (if I am reading the article correctly).
Therefore, it would seem to me that the amount of data redundancy required to cope with a given level of noise (channel degredation) increases exponentially with respect to a decreasing signal-to-noise ratio.
So, while redundant encoding schemes to ensure read integrity may exist to cope with seriously degraded storage media, they are likely to be quite expensive in terms of bits per unit of information.
Presuming that the phenomenen reported by Lysergic Acid holds true and does, in fact, apply to holographic data storage:
> if you record a hologram of a 3D object onto a photographic
> plate, you can in essence reproduce a 3D image of the whole
> object with any piece of that photographic plate.
Would this mean the end of "bad sectors" as we know it?
It would seem to me that if a part of the holographic storage device degrades in some way, one could simply read the data from any number of different "windows" (as described in the Wikipedia article) and get the proper result.
In fact, this could be used as a form of default error detection and correction: If, for example, the hologram is stored in a sphere, one could read the hologram from coordinates (x, y, z, lat1, lon1) and (x, y, z, lat2, lon2) -- where latitude and longitude combine with x, y, and z to create a vector from the surface of the sphere to coordinates x, y, and z within the sphere -- and see if one gets the same result. If one does not, the sphere is simply rotated so the target coordinate address is read from a different relative point on the surface. Since the surface of the sphere is large compared to the block of data stored at x, y, and z, there is bound to be a set of vectors which will result in identical blocks of data (unless the complete and total degredation of the sphere has taken place).
The trends I've been noticing lately are very disconcerting.
Think about what you get when the following technologies converge:
-- IP Traceback
-- VOIP Interception
-- Keylogging
-- Deep Packet Analysis
-- Automatic Vehicle License Plate Identification
-- Public/Metro Transit Card Tracking
Everyone now has the potential to become their own "Poor Man's NSA." Even local governments, or relatively poor and/or developing countries.
Of course, if a private citizen used these tools to protect their *own* interests, they could be charged with all sorts of crimes, like illegal wiretapping, computer intrusion and abuse, etc...
Although the laptop is probably a great piece of engineering for something that has a sub-$100 price tag, the decision to go with a MIPS processor is probably going to relegate the device to niche markets - census taking, for example, or maybe something along the lines of inventory control.
The lack of official (and I emphasize "official") Flash 9 and Adobe PDF support would probably be a deal breaker for Joe Average Home and Business user.
Granted, a most of the PDF spec is now available royalty-free, and an FOSS Flash plug-in has been released (and is under continuing development), but I doubt that is going to put sway too many folk's purchasing decisions.
The MIPS processor will probably doom it forever to the realm of Geekdom...
> Most video compression techniques including MPEG set a maximum number
> frames between base frames. A base frames can be decoded without any
> information about previous or future frames.
>
> All the motion vectors or deltas are calculated against the closest
> previous base frame.
Yeah, I forgot to include the whole keyframes thing... My bad. I should have said "not always."
However, the problem with keyframes is that their placement is often artificial; i.e., every 30 frames or so.
This limits the "compressability" of the stream by forcing the stream to carry a full-size frame for each second of video (at 30 frames/second). Note that I am not talking about the "lossy" compression applied to the pixels of the keyframe itself.
In some instances, the video stream could be compressed much more efficiently by analyzing the stream and including only a few keyframes during certain scenes, and using a full compliment of keyframes during more "active" scenes.
A good example of where this method could be used is the scene in Star Wars IV: A New Hope where the camera is looking at a sand dune, and Threepio is slowly revealed as he climbs the dune toward the camera from the other side. You could probably get away with just a few keyframes -- perhaps one for every 150 frames -- for the bulk of the scene. One the other hand, the space battle sequences over Endor in Star Wars VI: Return of The Jedi, being much more active scenes, would probably require one keyframe per 30 frames.
This could, of course, impose quite a performance penalty when originally encoding the video, as the encoder would need to cache quite a few frames -- let's say 1,200 frames (40 seconds at 30 frames/second) -- then analyze the chain of frames to determine how quickly the scene is changing. After the current 1,200 frame "window" is processed, the encoder would shift the window 120 frames downstream (for a 1,080 frame overlap), and repeat the process.
(Note again, for simplicity, I am not including audio synchronization as part of the discussion. Some formats require regular keyframes to keep the audio and video synchronized.)
Note that the above example is about the video component only of a single MPEG audio/video stream.
There is no reason that an encoder/decoder can't process audio in one thread and video in another, thereby using more than one core (which has already been discussed in other posts relating to this article).
The problem with MPEG encoding and decoding is that the data itself is not well suited to multi-threaded analysis.
Multi-threading is most efficient when it is applied to discrete data sets that have little or no dependency on each other.
For example, suppose I have a table with four columns -- three holding input values (A, B, and C) and one holding an output value (X). If the data in a given row of the table has nothing to do with the data in any other row, multi-threading works efficiently, because none of the threads are waiting for data from any of the other threads. If I want to process multiple rows at once, I simply spawn additional threads.
On the other hand, for data such as MPEG video, the composition of the next frame is equal to the composition of the current frame, plus some delta transformation - the changed pixels.
This introduces a dependency which precludes efficient multi-threaded processing, because each succeeding frame depends on the output of the calculations used to generate the prior frame. Even if more than one core is dedicated to processing the video stream, one core would wind up waiting on another, because the output from the first core would be used as the input to the second.
> "Next time I use an ATM with a touch screen, I am so repeating your experiment!"
Yeah...
In hindsight, I just wish I had paid more attention to what I was doing (i.e., to the region of the screen I was tapping). I was just "drumming" my fingers on the display, the way a bored person in school drums his/her fingers on a desk.
Parent modded as "Funny", but you know, the "Independent musician invoking antitrust against the RIAA" thing might just have something going for it.
Too bad you'd need a huge chunk of capital just to get the legal ball rolling...
Here in the US, the SQL Slammer worm of 2003 knocked about 13,000 Bank of America ATMs off-line. All of the ATMs and their back-end transaction servers were running Microsoft products.
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Slammer
-- http://www.cotse.com/20032701.html
Other banks, like Bank One (now JP Morgan Chase), ran OS/2 on the ATMs, and OS/2 Warp Server with IBM DB2 on the transaction servers. Most of the banks who used OS/2 and DB2 to handle their ATM transactions weathered the storm nicely...
Also, a few months ago I stopped at a bank machine to withdraw some cash.
So I entered my PIN and withdrawal amount. While waiting for the magic money machine to do its thing, I idly tapped my fingers in random patterns on the touch screen.
Suddenly, a standard Windows XP taskbar and Start button appeared.
Being curious, I tapped the Start button. Kinda freaked me out when a complete Start Menu appeared. Everything was there, including Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Windows Media Player.
I can't believe that neither the ATM machine manufacturer nor the bank put any effort into building a custom, stripped-down image to run the bank's cash machines...
A good chunk of the Command and Control systems on most modern (or most recently refitted) naval vessels in the United States' inventory run on Windows technology.
It kinda gives me the shivers knowing that one of our ships could be sunk by an "inbound" because the point defense system is suffering a BSOD...
> "... but because nearly everything we use in our daily lives is manufactured using some form of petroleum/oil."
This is why we need to
1. quit using oil for a fuel source, because we'll need it for other things.
and
2. stop manufacturing thermoset plastics which are not re-"meltable" (like vulcanized rubber, which is used in tires, and polyimides, which are used to make printed circuit boards), and develop better thermoplastics which *are* re-meltable to take their place (like the newer variants of polybutadiene).