Related to home environment products, I'd like to take a moment to share my experience with an ultrasonic humidifier. I needed to pick one up a couple of years ago and ultrasonics seemed to be the way to go due to instant-on, low power, no heat misting. Then the particle sensor on my air purifier went nuts. At first I thought it was just a fluke but then I shone one of those green laser pointers from thinkgeek through the air. Holy crap! The air was choked with particles - possibly minerals originally contained in the water. I'd also noticed a strange build-up of white power in my vacuum cleaner at the time. I changed to an evaporation-based humidifier and the problem was gone. The air purifier didn't complain, the vacuum was no longer picking up white dust and the laser pointer didn't turn up anything unusual in its beam. If you're using an ultrasonic perhaps using only distilled water will solve this problem. I suggest if you're concerned about air quality you check this out for yourself.
I once sniffed a sequence of illegal hash packets and it was like.. Ethereal man. Suddenly I could see cyberspace unfolding before me and it wasn't until later that I totally realized that you have to use a filter or your sniffer just captures way too much to handle in one session. Dude, being in promiscuous mode is quite an experience. Yeah... what?
You have a service, you charge $x for it, and you complain that the high bandwidth users are a problem. So you move them off into a higher tier. Surely the price of the lower tier should then come down proportionally?
But it won't.
And worse still that now even more artificially high price of the lowest tier will be used to further justify the new pricing of the higher tiers.
This is a total scam. Instead of increasing capacity the networks are actually scamming customers to increase revenue (due to sustained income vs reduced cost for the lower tiers plus premium pricing for higher tiers).
I'm not usually one to be indifferent when it comes to privacy issues, but what's scary about a system that you have to enable yourself in the first place?
Don't want the Government knowing where you are at all times? Too bad, you're already screwed. We don't know that they have pipes directly into the Google infrastructure but what we do know at this point is that they certainly have direct access to the infrastructure of AT&T and others so they can surely pinpoint you as well as Google Maps for Mobile does with the GPS disabled, if not significantly better since they could have signal information from multiple towers.
The only really bad thing about this is that if anyone does gain access to Google's infrastructure/data (e.g. via hacks or subpoena) and you do have various features of Google's software then they could in theory grab a lot more information about you at once than they could if you used similar software from many smaller companies. One would hope that Google, being the size that it is and having dealt with various attempted data-grabs already, at least has some legal and technical countermeasures in place against such things.
Everyone should be more concerned with companies that lay off workers in the US (regardless of status) but keep the positions and just move them overseas. That's what several companies are doing now. Ironically this removes openings from the US job market entirely, means no tax revenues or money going back into the domestic economy, and is often the results of entire departments being outsourced as opposed to a handful of positions, yet it doesn't seem nearly as frowned upon.
Workers in the receiving country often have fewer benefits and poorer working conditions than in the US which makes them more competitive, as we've heard in the big debate over the big three auto companies vs their foreign competitors. Essentially US companies are taking advantage of the disparity between the US and other nations, strengthening it, and the inevitable recourse, and only common-sense outcome is that either foreign nations must somehow be forced to close this gap in future or conditions for US workers must be brought down closer to their levels.
What bothers me most about MSDN documentation is that I've noticed information pertaining to the behavior of common API's on older versions of Windows disappearing. Just because Microsoft no longer supports an OS doesn't mean that a developer does not want to write compatible code for it. Sometimes I have to refer to local copies of older MSDN documentation and the online version to get a complete picture.
I also dislike that often searching MSDN documentation for C API's often results in you getting the.net versions as the top results, a cunning way to push their own languages I'm sure but I find it very annoying.
That depends. If you are against gay marriage, they are evil.
Not so. However, perhaps they are evil if you are against the First and Fourteenth Amendments:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Problem is with no-script you still have to decide if you trust or not-trust the site and if that level of trust you have is worth what the site is offering.
That slightly over-simplifies the protection that NoScript offers. For example, even when you allow script to run NoScript still provides protection against certain types of XSS, you can use it to force cookies to be exchanged over https for certain domains, it can block some plug-in types (Java, Flash, Silverlight), it features click-jacking protection, and just a couple of days ago it even added protection against attacks on twitter.
So yes, you do have to make that trade-off, but even when you click "allow" you're potentially better off with NoScript installed than without it.
You jest, but what struggles to match the sound of a good piano roll, or rather a good piano roll in a good piano, are el-cheapo midi synthesizers and some of the digital pianos of today. Many digital pianos are just samplers and it's very hard to create the expressiveness of an actual piano using layered samples. You need a lot of high resolution samples and most (affordable) digital instruments will come with a selection of virtual pianos so they need to divide up the ROM space. Software synths have come a long way though recently and Modartt's PianoTeq is actually really good.
I suppose there are limits on how "expressive" a piano roll is likely to be in the first place though.
For people that actually need to load unsigned 64-bit drivers (myself, for instance, to patch tcpip.sys so I can have lots of half-open connections at once), the procedure is actually pretty simple.
I followed the links that you posted and I think my definition of simple is different than yours.
IMO, this is the correct way to do it -- you can sign the driver yourself but you have to explicitly tell Windows to accept that signature.
Alternatively, Windows could tell you "Hey, this driver isn't signed, do you really want to install it?" with the same secure input method used by UAC. Which is pretty much how XP did it (minus secure confirmation). Which is my definition of simple.
You have to admit, the steps you have to go through under Vista are incomparable in terms of required knowledge and level of difficulty. Also, if this is the process MS requires to load an unsigned driver these tools should ship with the OS, not be part of a 2.7GB download.
To see signal strength in db on your BlackBerry hold Alt and type NMLL on the home screen.
I just bought another 8310 (GSM/EDGE) because I've seen far too many reports about short battery life on the new BlackBerry's. I really hope that I don't see too much degradation of service. Hopefully it's a valid reason to get out of contract for free. If not, the sales rep last told me that canceling a contract was only $75 now, so if you need a new device it's probably cheaper to pay the $75 and get the discounts/rebates on a new model rather than just paying for a new device.
What bothers me about Vista 64 is that Microsoft do not let you load unsigned drivers. Got a driver from a vendor that's not signed? You have to go through the trouble of signing it yourself and kicking your OS into test mode. The problem became worse with SP1 when MS made several known workarounds disappear.
I understand they're trying to work against root kits but I'd rather be able to easily install any drivers I choose on my own system then have Microsoft protecting me against myself and causing me all kinds of grief. I've also never been hit by a root kit and I would guess that regular viruses are just as problematic and more common for nearly everyone.
Good point. It is not the ISP doing the blocking, but the content provider selectively blocking to negotiate prices. I suppose that is different in principle.
Well, I think the more important point is that this represents the definitive end of net neutrality: Nobody was *actually* shut off because of the ultimate outcome but Viacom insinuated that unless TWC, the ISP, was willing to pay more they would no longer have access to the free online content not because of territory restrictions but because they weren't getting a big enough score from subscriber revenues. The waters are muddied only by the fact that they appeared to be pursuing revenue for their TV channels but TWC is the single service entity and they were obviously implying the online content had significant value in the deal overall.
Link #1"Viacom is trying to extort another $39 million annually"
Link #2 Viacom threatens to block TWC subscribers from accessing their free online content. They not only insinuate this to TWC during negotiations, but apparently also to subscribers using TWC's ISP as evidenced by this screenshot.
Despite all of the rhetoric about big brother and loss of privacy, I'm quite comfortable knowing that unless I'm actively trying to destablize the government, they don't care about what I am up to.
Today. But as their technology programs are expanded they may be forced to care about what you're up to. What happens the day a computer data-mining program decides that your purchase, travel, or association activities are too far outside the norm (perhaps not even specifically troublesome) and flags you for investigation? It would be irresponsible of them to ignore this and future laws will probably accept this as a reasonable basis for investigation, if they don't already.
You have the expectation that the government will always make rational decisions and policies. It's funny what can and has been rationalized.
1080i HDTV is displayed at the same frame rate as standard definition TV. In PAL land, that's 50 fields per second, which makes 25 frames per second.
Only if it's 1080i25/1080i30 and not 1080i50/1080i60
Even at 720p's 50 full frames per second in PAL countries, that does not give the perception of smoother motion.
Yes it does. There are no interlacing artifacts for the horizontal component of the motion.
The motion smoothness will be essentially the same
No, because the claim is that the octopus can see the individual pictures (i.e. fields) at 25/30 fps. Where there is significant horizontal motion in an a picture where each field is only updated every 1/25th of a second, the octopus may be able to see each field being updated. At 50 progressive fields per second the entire image is updated at twice the rate. This of course depends on the display type.
We have to remember that one reason CRT's look "smooth" to us is persistence of vision. We don't notice the light intensity fade over 1/25th of a second as the electron beam scans out the rest of the picture. However, the octopus's persistence of vision may be different. Imagine for a moment that the octopus see's the old "standard definition" display the same was as we see an old CRT when viewed through a camcorder: With big bands running across it due to the scanning done by the electron beam. Maybe with HDTV, where CRT technology is less likely to be used, this is no longer the case and thus the octopus sees the picture as real.
Anyway, to me this is perfectly plausible. We shouldn't be dismissive so quickly towards a behavior that has actually been observed for several subjects, even if we can't instantly explain it.
If I were one of the BD+ developers, I'd be pretty proud of the fact that the DRM-hackers thought that RSA was most vulnerable part of my DRM scheme.
But that is not what they are saying. What they are saying is that if they could solve this problem then they would not need to continually expend such effort breaking players to compromise changes to BD+ in future.
The Internet would not be melting down if the ISPs actually improved their capacity over time. I still get the same bandwidth today from my cable ISP that I got when I subscribed 3 years ago and to deal with increasing demand rather than improving capacity and speed instead we hear about bandwidth caps and throttling.
Internet service in this country is failing to grow in line with demand and the finger is being pointed squarely at "abusive" customers while providers try to hold a price point and a revenue line with as little investment as possible. It's quite incredible really.
GTA IV PC uses SecuROM for protecting our EXE until street date has passed
Nice to know that they'll happily install persistent DRM on everyone's system to protect against a one-time event.
Couldn't they do any better? For example instead of activation post a patch containing critical functionality (even the EXE itself) that enables the game on the official website only on the launch date. The game could download it automatically on first run or give you an appropriate message if you try to play the game early. It achieves the same thing without installing a DRM platform. Hell, it's even better because you could actually avoid distributing the game engine which would prevent anyone from running the game by hacking the protection.
Slashdot Mirror
Related to home environment products, I'd like to take a moment to share my experience with an ultrasonic humidifier. I needed to pick one up a couple of years ago and ultrasonics seemed to be the way to go due to instant-on, low power, no heat misting. Then the particle sensor on my air purifier went nuts. At first I thought it was just a fluke but then I shone one of those green laser pointers from thinkgeek through the air. Holy crap! The air was choked with particles - possibly minerals originally contained in the water. I'd also noticed a strange build-up of white power in my vacuum cleaner at the time. I changed to an evaporation-based humidifier and the problem was gone. The air purifier didn't complain, the vacuum was no longer picking up white dust and the laser pointer didn't turn up anything unusual in its beam. If you're using an ultrasonic perhaps using only distilled water will solve this problem. I suggest if you're concerned about air quality you check this out for yourself.
So... they invented packet sniffing?
I once sniffed a sequence of illegal hash packets and it was like.. Ethereal man. Suddenly I could see cyberspace unfolding before me and it wasn't until later that I totally realized that you have to use a filter or your sniffer just captures way too much to handle in one session. Dude, being in promiscuous mode is quite an experience. Yeah. .. what?
peace.
Here's what I want to know.
You have a service, you charge $x for it, and you complain that the high bandwidth users are a problem. So you move them off into a higher tier. Surely the price of the lower tier should then come down proportionally?
But it won't.
And worse still that now even more artificially high price of the lowest tier will be used to further justify the new pricing of the higher tiers.
This is a total scam. Instead of increasing capacity the networks are actually scamming customers to increase revenue (due to sustained income vs reduced cost for the lower tiers plus premium pricing for higher tiers).
Why is this not an allotrope? I'm not a chemist so excuse me if the answer seems obvious to those with a better understanding.
I'm not usually one to be indifferent when it comes to privacy issues, but what's scary about a system that you have to enable yourself in the first place?
Don't want the Government knowing where you are at all times? Too bad, you're already screwed. We don't know that they have pipes directly into the Google infrastructure but what we do know at this point is that they certainly have direct access to the infrastructure of AT&T and others so they can surely pinpoint you as well as Google Maps for Mobile does with the GPS disabled, if not significantly better since they could have signal information from multiple towers.
The only really bad thing about this is that if anyone does gain access to Google's infrastructure/data (e.g. via hacks or subpoena) and you do have various features of Google's software then they could in theory grab a lot more information about you at once than they could if you used similar software from many smaller companies. One would hope that Google, being the size that it is and having dealt with various attempted data-grabs already, at least has some legal and technical countermeasures in place against such things.
.. to get a decent score in 3DMark ..
That assumes you can dban it. If it was an MTP-only device you might have difficulty.
Everyone should be more concerned with companies that lay off workers in the US (regardless of status) but keep the positions and just move them overseas. That's what several companies are doing now. Ironically this removes openings from the US job market entirely, means no tax revenues or money going back into the domestic economy, and is often the results of entire departments being outsourced as opposed to a handful of positions, yet it doesn't seem nearly as frowned upon.
Workers in the receiving country often have fewer benefits and poorer working conditions than in the US which makes them more competitive, as we've heard in the big debate over the big three auto companies vs their foreign competitors. Essentially US companies are taking advantage of the disparity between the US and other nations, strengthening it, and the inevitable recourse, and only common-sense outcome is that either foreign nations must somehow be forced to close this gap in future or conditions for US workers must be brought down closer to their levels.
What bothers me most about MSDN documentation is that I've noticed information pertaining to the behavior of common API's on older versions of Windows disappearing. Just because Microsoft no longer supports an OS doesn't mean that a developer does not want to write compatible code for it. Sometimes I have to refer to local copies of older MSDN documentation and the online version to get a complete picture.
I also dislike that often searching MSDN documentation for C API's often results in you getting the .net versions as the top results, a cunning way to push their own languages I'm sure but I find it very annoying.
Nevermind those particular sales, let's just look at the facts:
Guidance for year ending June 30th 2009:
Revenue = $67.3 billion to $68.1 billion vs. operating income of $26.3 billion to $26.9 billion
I'm no expert, but that seems sustainable to me.
That depends. If you are against gay marriage, they are evil.
Not so. However, perhaps they are evil if you are against the First and Fourteenth Amendments:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Problem is with no-script you still have to decide if you trust or not-trust the site and if that level of trust you have is worth what the site is offering.
That slightly over-simplifies the protection that NoScript offers. For example, even when you allow script to run NoScript still provides protection against certain types of XSS, you can use it to force cookies to be exchanged over https for certain domains, it can block some plug-in types (Java, Flash, Silverlight), it features click-jacking protection, and just a couple of days ago it even added protection against attacks on twitter.
So yes, you do have to make that trade-off, but even when you click "allow" you're potentially better off with NoScript installed than without it.
Creative Labs.
Have they released a good product in this millenium?
Yes!
Now if only they'd release some drivers that work so we can use it..
You jest, but what struggles to match the sound of a good piano roll, or rather a good piano roll in a good piano, are el-cheapo midi synthesizers and some of the digital pianos of today. Many digital pianos are just samplers and it's very hard to create the expressiveness of an actual piano using layered samples. You need a lot of high resolution samples and most (affordable) digital instruments will come with a selection of virtual pianos so they need to divide up the ROM space. Software synths have come a long way though recently and Modartt's PianoTeq is actually really good.
I suppose there are limits on how "expressive" a piano roll is likely to be in the first place though.
For people that actually need to load unsigned 64-bit drivers (myself, for instance, to patch tcpip.sys so I can have lots of half-open connections at once), the procedure is actually pretty simple.
I followed the links that you posted and I think my definition of simple is different than yours.
IMO, this is the correct way to do it -- you can sign the driver yourself but you have to explicitly tell Windows to accept that signature.
Alternatively, Windows could tell you "Hey, this driver isn't signed, do you really want to install it?" with the same secure input method used by UAC. Which is pretty much how XP did it (minus secure confirmation). Which is my definition of simple.
You have to admit, the steps you have to go through under Vista are incomparable in terms of required knowledge and level of difficulty. Also, if this is the process MS requires to load an unsigned driver these tools should ship with the OS, not be part of a 2.7GB download.
To see signal strength in db on your BlackBerry hold Alt and type NMLL on the home screen.
I just bought another 8310 (GSM/EDGE) because I've seen far too many reports about short battery life on the new BlackBerry's. I really hope that I don't see too much degradation of service. Hopefully it's a valid reason to get out of contract for free. If not, the sales rep last told me that canceling a contract was only $75 now, so if you need a new device it's probably cheaper to pay the $75 and get the discounts/rebates on a new model rather than just paying for a new device.
What bothers me about Vista 64 is that Microsoft do not let you load unsigned drivers. Got a driver from a vendor that's not signed? You have to go through the trouble of signing it yourself and kicking your OS into test mode. The problem became worse with SP1 when MS made several known workarounds disappear.
I understand they're trying to work against root kits but I'd rather be able to easily install any drivers I choose on my own system then have Microsoft protecting me against myself and causing me all kinds of grief. I've also never been hit by a root kit and I would guess that regular viruses are just as problematic and more common for nearly everyone.
Good point. It is not the ISP doing the blocking, but the content provider selectively blocking to negotiate prices. I suppose that is different in principle.
Well, I think the more important point is that this represents the definitive end of net neutrality: Nobody was *actually* shut off because of the ultimate outcome but Viacom insinuated that unless TWC, the ISP, was willing to pay more they would no longer have access to the free online content not because of territory restrictions but because they weren't getting a big enough score from subscriber revenues. The waters are muddied only by the fact that they appeared to be pursuing revenue for their TV channels but TWC is the single service entity and they were obviously implying the online content had significant value in the deal overall.
From the mouth of the TWC CEO:
Link #1 "Viacom is trying to extort another $39 million annually"
Link #2 Viacom threatens to block TWC subscribers from accessing their free online content. They not only insinuate this to TWC during negotiations, but apparently also to subscribers using TWC's ISP as evidenced by this screenshot.
Despite all of the rhetoric about big brother and loss of privacy, I'm quite comfortable knowing that unless I'm actively trying to destablize the government, they don't care about what I am up to.
Today. But as their technology programs are expanded they may be forced to care about what you're up to. What happens the day a computer data-mining program decides that your purchase, travel, or association activities are too far outside the norm (perhaps not even specifically troublesome) and flags you for investigation? It would be irresponsible of them to ignore this and future laws will probably accept this as a reasonable basis for investigation, if they don't already.
You have the expectation that the government will always make rational decisions and policies. It's funny what can and has been rationalized.
1080i HDTV is displayed at the same frame rate as standard definition TV. In PAL land, that's 50 fields per second, which makes 25 frames per second.
Only if it's 1080i25/1080i30 and not 1080i50/1080i60
Even at 720p's 50 full frames per second in PAL countries, that does not give the perception of smoother motion.
Yes it does. There are no interlacing artifacts for the horizontal component of the motion.
The motion smoothness will be essentially the same
No, because the claim is that the octopus can see the individual pictures (i.e. fields) at 25/30 fps. Where there is significant horizontal motion in an a picture where each field is only updated every 1/25th of a second, the octopus may be able to see each field being updated. At 50 progressive fields per second the entire image is updated at twice the rate. This of course depends on the display type.
We have to remember that one reason CRT's look "smooth" to us is persistence of vision. We don't notice the light intensity fade over 1/25th of a second as the electron beam scans out the rest of the picture. However, the octopus's persistence of vision may be different. Imagine for a moment that the octopus see's the old "standard definition" display the same was as we see an old CRT when viewed through a camcorder: With big bands running across it due to the scanning done by the electron beam. Maybe with HDTV, where CRT technology is less likely to be used, this is no longer the case and thus the octopus sees the picture as real.
Anyway, to me this is perfectly plausible. We shouldn't be dismissive so quickly towards a behavior that has actually been observed for several subjects, even if we can't instantly explain it.
If I were one of the BD+ developers, I'd be pretty proud of the fact that the DRM-hackers thought that RSA was most vulnerable part of my DRM scheme.
But that is not what they are saying. What they are saying is that if they could solve this problem then they would not need to continually expend such effort breaking players to compromise changes to BD+ in future.
Exactly.
The Internet would not be melting down if the ISPs actually improved their capacity over time. I still get the same bandwidth today from my cable ISP that I got when I subscribed 3 years ago and to deal with increasing demand rather than improving capacity and speed instead we hear about bandwidth caps and throttling.
Internet service in this country is failing to grow in line with demand and the finger is being pointed squarely at "abusive" customers while providers try to hold a price point and a revenue line with as little investment as possible. It's quite incredible really.
GTA IV PC uses SecuROM for protecting our EXE until street date has passed
Nice to know that they'll happily install persistent DRM on everyone's system to protect against a one-time event.
Couldn't they do any better? For example instead of activation post a patch containing critical functionality (even the EXE itself) that enables the game on the official website only on the launch date. The game could download it automatically on first run or give you an appropriate message if you try to play the game early. It achieves the same thing without installing a DRM platform. Hell, it's even better because you could actually avoid distributing the game engine which would prevent anyone from running the game by hacking the protection.