2W consumed 24/7. Yeah, that sounds like a lot. 336 watt-hours per week, to be precise.
Unless you consider, say, the typical 60W incandescent hall light that is on for four hours each night. 1,680 watt-hours per week.
I'd venture to guess that the majority of families have at least one light of this sort that is turned on between the time the sun goes down and the time the family goes to sleep, and probably more than one (porches, foyers, outdoor sconces, et cetera). So there you have it, folks: throw out five PS2s... or use one less lightbulb.
Yes, I can see how this is a horribly pressing problem.
There's a company for anything you might want...
on
The MySpace Ecosystem
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· Score: 1
I disagree. If you honestly believe that advertising companies, mainstream marketers and Big Media aren't going to be able to stop the "runaway train" of the Web, just look at who owns MySpace. Look at the anti-Net Neutrality propaganda that is being pushed to idiots in Congress who think the Internet is a "series of pipes". All it takes is a bit of corporate regulation and redefinition of the word "competition" to mean "sure, you have a choice in how you connect to and what you see in the Internet -- just sell your house and move," and this runaway train will be switched to a new track so smoothly and quietly that you won't even realize you're being manipulated until it's too late.
Well, that's not entirely true: compilers for PCs may not be a big business anymore, but compilers for embedded systems are still a huge business, despite the availability of GCC for many platforms. You need only look at IAR to confirm that...
Re:It's a "Beacon Bar" not a "Sensor Bar"
on
More Wii-mote Info
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· Score: 1
You know, the best part about your description here is that the IGN writer speculating about the camera bit might not nearly be as far off his rocker as everybody thinks he is. Oh, sure, I doubt that Nintendo would include such functionality myself, as a one-megapixel monochrome image is awfully underwhelming... but if what you are saying is true, the Wii-mote does have a 1024x768 infrared CCD built into it, rather than measuring position like a mouse or conventional lightgun would.
Dear God! With those colors, I suppose they call it "EyeOS" because you'll need new ones after the lime-green-on-sky-blue vaporize your existing corneas.
It's a little known fact that terrorists use MySpace to communicate all the time. Just look at a recent entry I found:
Dear MySpace:
Today Ahmed and I planned on defeating the American Zionist devils, but then we saw this commercial on the decadent western television using a song from Voltaire as its background music and we totally had to call Muhammad and Osama and talk about how we couldn't believe Voltaire would sell out like that, and now I just don't know if I can be an emo goth anymore, I'm so depressed.
Okay, okay, I admit, that couldn't possibly be real, as the spelling and grammar are far too coherent.
How wonderful it would be to use this paranoia and corruption against the very people trying to gain power from it.
Here is what I would like to do: set up a giant network of systems using peer-to-peer communication. Have the flows be extremely encrypted, obfuscated, and misleading. Make it look like we're going to great lengths to hide something that must be horribly, terribly awful, but leave a trail just noticeable enough to attract the attention of these folks who would like to "seek out illegal content". Make it the be-all and end-all of honeypots to these folks, and stick in just enough backdoors and flaws to make it crackable. Build up tons and tons of media hype about how the wonderful government is cracking down on these horrible hackers who want to Destroy America and Hurt Our Children.
And, in the end, when the data is exposed... it should all be political speech. Nothing inciting violence, nothing threatening anybody, nothing that could possibly be construed by any sane person as terrorist speech or child-targeting... just essays, articles, and manifestos about the government extending their grasp into our privacy every chance they get. Include in this an essay detailing exactly why such seemingly innocuous data would be so heavily encrypted.
Get the story out, all over the media, about how the government and law enforcement invested hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars hacking into political speech, trying to silence dissent. Get the media (what's left of it that doesn't roll over on command, anyway) to spread it everywhere. Let every Republican who believes strongly in personal rights and property know just what has happened, and how they are not safe as long as those who would spy on us in order to ostensibly protect us remain in power. Set them up to knock them down.
The problem is that whoever does this would definitely have to accept the consequences. The government spinners would do everything they could possibly do to demonize those responsible. They would be branded as "info-terrorists". They would go to extreme lengths to make the public think these folks were spreading child porn, classified documents, bomb plans (WMDs?). Federal officials would probably plant those very things, so they didn't look like they were trying to crush dissent. The patriots who would do this would have their computers confiscated, their reputations shattered, and would probably have to do jail time. They would essentially be sacrificing themselves for their country.
But imagine what a public outcry it would cause. Can you imagine the headlines? "Government invades privacy of American citizens, tries to silence protest speech."
Well, I was exaggerating to make a joke -- heck, that's the basis of most humor. Do I honestly think the United States is a fascist nation? Of course not. I wouldn't be able to write this if it was. But some of what has been happening recently is worrisome to me, because it isn't just the government, but corporations invading our privacy in the name of "making sure we comply with laws". It is very reminiscent of Minority Report's "Precrime", except here we don't use telepaths, we use speculation and innuendo.
I'm a little confused by your question, though; I'd say quite a few people I know would say they're aware their ISP and phone records can be obtained, because it was just all over the news. Is it happening to everyone? No. But the fact that it can, and the government thinks this is okay, is what frightens me. If your parents lived in Cuba for 40 years, they probably understand that the mentality of "we're going to spy on everyone, and if you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about" is one aspect of how fascism looks in its infancy.
"Hack something together that you can show the sales folks, and then keep adding to it with horrible kludges until you get something resembling the final product which complies. Ship immediately."
Commercial fonts are carefully, painstakingly tweaking for maximum visual effect
And I'm sure it makes just as much of a difference as that multi-thousand-dollar gear that audiophiles purchase to get that absolute perfect reproduction that they swear they can hear.
Granted, I will agree with you about the lack of Unicode support in many free fonts, but you seem to be implying that there is a direct correlation between cost and quality, with no exceptions.
If Grandma and Grampa Huckleberry bought an $8000 1989 Yugo with a faulty transmission and cracked engine block, because the salesman blatantly lied about the car's internals, then it's on them. If he managed to sell them the hyper-premium undercoating special and "turn signal fluid", then that's a job well done.
That may be because building an embedded product with Windows Embedded is just slightly above doing triple integrals in your head in terms of startup complexity. Microsoft's official procedure for creating a bootable CompactFlash card with an NTFS file system for Windows Embedded is to run a DOS utility. It must be run in DOS real mode, not a DOS box, which means you need a CF reader with an IDE interface, not a USB one. This was somewhat tough for us, since CF/IDE interfaces are sold by almost nobody these days. For that matter, we don't exactly have a copy of Windows 98 to dig up and install on a system.
The solution I came up with? Hook a USB flash reader up to a Fedora Core box, and use ntfstools to format it. Took all of fifteen seconds.
Unfortunately, we don't have the option of never working with Windows Embedded again, since we work with whatever our clients need us to... but I've developed three products that use embedded Linux (using Buildroot), and all three combined were easier to get off the ground than that Windows monstrosity.
Re:Old schoolin'
on
Quake is 10
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Anyone who mods this "Interesting" instead of "Funny" is obviously under the age of 25.
Here's my take on it: if you could guarantee a competitive marketplace, then yes, deregulation would work nicely, and the free market would keep everything in order. The only problem is that there cannot be a large competitive market for last-mile connectivity, due to physical constraints. How many physical options do you have for getting the broadband connection to your house? The phone line and the cable line. Let's even add broadband-over-powerline here, assuming it ever gets off the ground. Then you have satellite, if you consider it a competitor (I don't, because the necessarily long ping times make VoIP and other two-way realtime communication over it impossible). Finally, we can throw in distributed WiFi as a pipe dream (one that last-mile owners are, ironically, trying to quash via government intervention to pass laws against it). So that is a maximum of four, maybe five competitive last-mile providers to your house.
Four choices? Seems great! And due to vertical expansion, all of them will restrict access to Vonage in favor of their own VoIP solution. It's trivial for a handful of corporations to agree to fix prices under the table, and that's exactly what they will do, because you won't have any other options. What will you do, find a way to literally pipe in broadband via the plumbing? IP over Topsoil? Perhaps Data-Over-Natural-Gas will be developed.
Anyways, that's how I see it. Just like communism, laissez-faire capitalism may be a great theory, but runs into some nasty real-world snags in practice.
"Attack on the switchboards?" What is this, the 1940s? Is Lily Tomlin working there and patching calls through to "Brighton Five-Oh-Nye-in?"
Do people honestly think a giant company wouldn't have several dedicated outgoing lines that (a) are unpublished, or (b) can't accept incoming calls?
This whole thing may look good on paper, but I agree with the folks who say this is just going to punish the administrative assistants. All the RIAA executives will notice is that they may not get their grande chai latte quite as quickly.
You just learned about that? The whole Kirk/Spock pairing thing was essentially the basis for modern "slash" fan-fiction on the Internet. There are authors out there who will pair just about any two popular male leads together... I just shrug and figure it's the analogue of us straight males gawking over lesbians.
Slashdot Mirror
2W consumed 24/7. Yeah, that sounds like a lot. 336 watt-hours per week, to be precise.
Unless you consider, say, the typical 60W incandescent hall light that is on for four hours each night. 1,680 watt-hours per week.
I'd venture to guess that the majority of families have at least one light of this sort that is turned on between the time the sun goes down and the time the family goes to sleep, and probably more than one (porches, foyers, outdoor sconces, et cetera). So there you have it, folks: throw out five PS2s... or use one less lightbulb.
Yes, I can see how this is a horribly pressing problem.
... even spyware!
I disagree. If you honestly believe that advertising companies, mainstream marketers and Big Media aren't going to be able to stop the "runaway train" of the Web, just look at who owns MySpace. Look at the anti-Net Neutrality propaganda that is being pushed to idiots in Congress who think the Internet is a "series of pipes". All it takes is a bit of corporate regulation and redefinition of the word "competition" to mean "sure, you have a choice in how you connect to and what you see in the Internet -- just sell your house and move," and this runaway train will be switched to a new track so smoothly and quietly that you won't even realize you're being manipulated until it's too late.
Yes, I'm pessimistic.
Well, that's not entirely true: compilers for PCs may not be a big business anymore, but compilers for embedded systems are still a huge business, despite the availability of GCC for many platforms. You need only look at IAR to confirm that...
You know, the best part about your description here is that the IGN writer speculating about the camera bit might not nearly be as far off his rocker as everybody thinks he is. Oh, sure, I doubt that Nintendo would include such functionality myself, as a one-megapixel monochrome image is awfully underwhelming... but if what you are saying is true, the Wii-mote does have a 1024x768 infrared CCD built into it, rather than measuring position like a mouse or conventional lightgun would.
No "Internet Operating System" will ever be complete, in my opinion, until it contains a web browser.
So I can nest another Internet Operating System in it.
Et cetera...
Dear God! With those colors, I suppose they call it "EyeOS" because you'll need new ones after the lime-green-on-sky-blue vaporize your existing corneas.
Okay, okay, I admit, that couldn't possibly be real, as the spelling and grammar are far too coherent.
Oooh! I'm gonna get right on that! And then I'm going to convert my structured settlement into a large lump sum, like that lawyer guy on the TV says!
Quick, Billy-Sue, let's get you dressed in slutty clothes and go to the mall! We's got some lawyerin' to do!
How wonderful it would be to use this paranoia and corruption against the very people trying to gain power from it.
Here is what I would like to do: set up a giant network of systems using peer-to-peer communication. Have the flows be extremely encrypted, obfuscated, and misleading. Make it look like we're going to great lengths to hide something that must be horribly, terribly awful, but leave a trail just noticeable enough to attract the attention of these folks who would like to "seek out illegal content". Make it the be-all and end-all of honeypots to these folks, and stick in just enough backdoors and flaws to make it crackable. Build up tons and tons of media hype about how the wonderful government is cracking down on these horrible hackers who want to Destroy America and Hurt Our Children.
And, in the end, when the data is exposed... it should all be political speech. Nothing inciting violence, nothing threatening anybody, nothing that could possibly be construed by any sane person as terrorist speech or child-targeting... just essays, articles, and manifestos about the government extending their grasp into our privacy every chance they get. Include in this an essay detailing exactly why such seemingly innocuous data would be so heavily encrypted.
Get the story out, all over the media, about how the government and law enforcement invested hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars hacking into political speech, trying to silence dissent. Get the media (what's left of it that doesn't roll over on command, anyway) to spread it everywhere. Let every Republican who believes strongly in personal rights and property know just what has happened, and how they are not safe as long as those who would spy on us in order to ostensibly protect us remain in power. Set them up to knock them down.
The problem is that whoever does this would definitely have to accept the consequences. The government spinners would do everything they could possibly do to demonize those responsible. They would be branded as "info-terrorists". They would go to extreme lengths to make the public think these folks were spreading child porn, classified documents, bomb plans (WMDs?). Federal officials would probably plant those very things, so they didn't look like they were trying to crush dissent. The patriots who would do this would have their computers confiscated, their reputations shattered, and would probably have to do jail time. They would essentially be sacrificing themselves for their country.
But imagine what a public outcry it would cause. Can you imagine the headlines? "Government invades privacy of American citizens, tries to silence protest speech."
Well, I was exaggerating to make a joke -- heck, that's the basis of most humor. Do I honestly think the United States is a fascist nation? Of course not. I wouldn't be able to write this if it was. But some of what has been happening recently is worrisome to me, because it isn't just the government, but corporations invading our privacy in the name of "making sure we comply with laws". It is very reminiscent of Minority Report's "Precrime", except here we don't use telepaths, we use speculation and innuendo.
I'm a little confused by your question, though; I'd say quite a few people I know would say they're aware their ISP and phone records can be obtained, because it was just all over the news. Is it happening to everyone? No. But the fact that it can, and the government thinks this is okay, is what frightens me. If your parents lived in Cuba for 40 years, they probably understand that the mentality of "we're going to spy on everyone, and if you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about" is one aspect of how fascism looks in its infancy.
And we are sure to use un'neccesary apostrophe's every'where.
God, I'm so em'barrassed.
See, there's the difference between America and Canada.
We make sure that the customer's don't know when we're spying on them.
"Hack something together that you can show the sales folks, and then keep adding to it with horrible kludges until you get something resembling the final product which complies. Ship immediately."
And I'm sure it makes just as much of a difference as that multi-thousand-dollar gear that audiophiles purchase to get that absolute perfect reproduction that they swear they can hear.
Granted, I will agree with you about the lack of Unicode support in many free fonts, but you seem to be implying that there is a direct correlation between cost and quality, with no exceptions.
If Grandma and Grampa Huckleberry bought an $8000 1989 Yugo with a faulty transmission and cracked engine block, because the salesman blatantly lied about the car's internals, then it's on them. If he managed to sell them the hyper-premium undercoating special and "turn signal fluid", then that's a job well done.
Slime is slime is slime.
Holy cow, someone owns a copyright on blank media now!?
Quick, everybody! Hide your erasers! It's a circumvention device!
That may be because building an embedded product with Windows Embedded is just slightly above doing triple integrals in your head in terms of startup complexity. Microsoft's official procedure for creating a bootable CompactFlash card with an NTFS file system for Windows Embedded is to run a DOS utility. It must be run in DOS real mode, not a DOS box, which means you need a CF reader with an IDE interface, not a USB one. This was somewhat tough for us, since CF/IDE interfaces are sold by almost nobody these days. For that matter, we don't exactly have a copy of Windows 98 to dig up and install on a system.
The solution I came up with? Hook a USB flash reader up to a Fedora Core box, and use ntfstools to format it. Took all of fifteen seconds.
Unfortunately, we don't have the option of never working with Windows Embedded again, since we work with whatever our clients need us to... but I've developed three products that use embedded Linux (using Buildroot), and all three combined were easier to get off the ground than that Windows monstrosity.
Anyone who mods this "Interesting" instead of "Funny" is obviously under the age of 25.
Here's my take on it: if you could guarantee a competitive marketplace, then yes, deregulation would work nicely, and the free market would keep everything in order. The only problem is that there cannot be a large competitive market for last-mile connectivity, due to physical constraints. How many physical options do you have for getting the broadband connection to your house? The phone line and the cable line. Let's even add broadband-over-powerline here, assuming it ever gets off the ground. Then you have satellite, if you consider it a competitor (I don't, because the necessarily long ping times make VoIP and other two-way realtime communication over it impossible). Finally, we can throw in distributed WiFi as a pipe dream (one that last-mile owners are, ironically, trying to quash via government intervention to pass laws against it). So that is a maximum of four, maybe five competitive last-mile providers to your house.
Four choices? Seems great! And due to vertical expansion, all of them will restrict access to Vonage in favor of their own VoIP solution. It's trivial for a handful of corporations to agree to fix prices under the table, and that's exactly what they will do, because you won't have any other options. What will you do, find a way to literally pipe in broadband via the plumbing? IP over Topsoil? Perhaps Data-Over-Natural-Gas will be developed.
Anyways, that's how I see it. Just like communism, laissez-faire capitalism may be a great theory, but runs into some nasty real-world snags in practice.
"Attack on the switchboards?" What is this, the 1940s? Is Lily Tomlin working there and patching calls through to "Brighton Five-Oh-Nye-in?"
Do people honestly think a giant company wouldn't have several dedicated outgoing lines that (a) are unpublished, or (b) can't accept incoming calls?
This whole thing may look good on paper, but I agree with the folks who say this is just going to punish the administrative assistants. All the RIAA executives will notice is that they may not get their grande chai latte quite as quickly.
"Mission Accomplished", anyone?
You just learned about that? The whole Kirk/Spock pairing thing was essentially the basis for modern "slash" fan-fiction on the Internet. There are authors out there who will pair just about any two popular male leads together... I just shrug and figure it's the analogue of us straight males gawking over lesbians.
Dear NBRS:
Please feel free to try and examine the traffic flows from my SSH-tunneled connection to a box at home with a wired broadband connection.
Sincerely,
glindsey
I mean, Sony/BMG can track down the exact studio apartment in Chicago of someone who downloaded "Ooops, I Did It Again"
Oh my God, they've found me!