Wrong season. That isn't an easter egg; it's a Hallowe'en prank. An easter egg is something you have to look for in order to find. As for it being harmless fun, I suppose there aren't too many people who are orange/black colour-blind, but you still need to consider the unintended consequences.
Glad to see they passed the test, or at least didn't blow up.
"No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. What? Look, somebody's got to have some damn perspective around here. Boom, sooner or later. BOOM!"
I doubt your WiFi network would be in trouble if they are jamming cellular & PCS frequencies. And "jamming" a cell phone network isn't a high-power endeavor. Put a micro-basestation operating inside the facility, and phones operating inside the facility will likely find it over more distant base stations outside. What you connect the micro basestation to is then up to you. If nothing, then all phone calls go into the bit-bucket.
It would be an excellent application for cruise control. Set the car to the same speed as the car infront of me. (But is subject to speed measurement inaccuracies)
Also, it might indicate someone is coming up behind you at greater than your speed. For example, if you stop for a yellow light, and the car behind you doesn't seem to be... or not decelerating fast enough.
Drawbacks: the police could set speed traps without the need for radar or ladar, rendering your wonderful new radar detector (where legal) useless. The cars would be broadcasting their speed to the camera - the camera would just need to photograph the plates.
We don't even need to be close to average. In fact, we can be far off from average.
Case in point, we can be in a low-density bubble. If we were in a high-density bubble, and things appeared closer than they were, and consequently appear to be slowing down much faster, and we might conclude the universe is closed (and will end in a gnab-gib). Then this bubble theory is proposed and suggest we are in a high-density bubble, and objections would again be raised that we're in a special place.
So we can argue... low density bubbles would be "special", and high density bubbles would be "special", and average density would (because being perfectly average is unlikely) be "special".
Is being near the center of a bubble "special"? If we weren't, we may have noticed a gross disparity in the distance -vs- rate of recession of galaxies in the various directions, and concluded we were off to the side of the big-bang explosion. Theories that eschew being in a special place wouldn't be as strong, since, as we wouldn't have appeared to be at the center of the big bang, we wouldn't have looked for another explanation for the appearance of being special... that is, everywhere appears to be the center of the big bang.
So, just because we aren't at the center of the solar-system, and aren't near the center of our galaxy, doesn't mean we don't happen to be near the center of our bubble. In fact, it is worse for us, since it makes it harder for us to understand the universe.
If they are preloading desktop environment files, while waiting for the user to type in a password, that can allow people to guess usernames!
Back in the days of yore, you could tell if you typed in a valid username by how long it took to validate the login attempt. A valid user with invalid password was reported immediately; an invalid user took longer. This was changed to always take a constant time, to prevent username guessing attacks.
With preloading desktop environment files, if a user is sitting at the machine, they could type in a username, and listen for disk activity. No activity? Try a different username!
And yes, I know, if the machine is not in a secure location, it isn't secure. But the preload behaviour for valid usernames may open up other attack vectors. For example, if the user environment files are on NFS, a flurry of network activity may signal a correctly guessed username.
Oh, they're definitely the ones causing the crisis, with unlimited text packages. Presumably, they'll do the switch part of bait-n-switch at some point (unlimited becomes say 50 msgs/day). Voice traffic will always have priority over text messaging, since they can delay that as much as needed, as long as the average text arrival rate is less than the average service rate, and their queues are deep enough to handle bursts.
I'll concede that the SMS system isn't at the breaking point yet, so the networks are at this point probably just gouging the customers. But the incremental cost of text messaging isn't zero for the networks, because the system just wasn't designed for it at the scale it is being used, and it'll need patching/fixing soon.
Perversely, long text messages (like e-mails, and what not) are just fine, especially for EV-DO. It is the fast, frequent, short crap that'll cause the problems.
For sending SMS messages, on the reverse link (mobile to network), there are accesses channels which correspond to the 1-8 paging channels. A mobile will start broadcasting its request periodically, a little stronger each time, until the network acknowledges the access attempt.
Currently, a traffic channel is encoded with a long-code specific to the individual cell phone assigned to the traffic channel. No problem, we can encode it with a general-purpose long code, known to all cell phones - this is just software. Each phone already has a slot it is assigned to wake up for to listen for paging channel messages (incoming calls). Do we wake the phone up at a different time slot, for these extra text messages? That means more awake time, and a shorter battery life. Or maybe listen on the extra pseudo-traffic channels when it wakes up for paging messages? That means extra decoder hardware. Maybe a new paging message that says "advanced phones, go listen on the pseudo-traffic channel 'cause I'm sending out an SMS to one or more of you."
These can be done, but it requires cooperation of the network providers, the handset manufactures, and the chip makers. Changes to the protocols go through committees to get approved and into the standards, and takes time. Some of these costs go into the cost of the phones, which the networks usually subsidize for their customers, so they need to make money to pay for it.
In the mean time, until the "fix" arrives (new phones, protocols, technology,...) to prevent the existing system from cracking, the network providers can really only do one thing: Raise the user cost of the text messages, so to reduce the volume of text messages.
As an existing, bandwidth limited, inefficient channel for SMS, it follows the usual economic supply and demand forces. Prices will rise.
Well, the network operators are greedy, too. But sending SMS messages at ever increasing rates by customers isn't free for the networks. There is a serious SMS crisis looming on the horizon.
In this case, the SYNC channel message tells the phone how many paging channels there are, and only has 3 bits for this information. And the sync channel message doesn't have any versioning information, so they can't add another bit without breaking all existing phones.
Even with EV-DO (data optimized), text messaging still has a fundamental problem: it is short. If a traffic channel is brought up to send the message, the base station has to tell the access terminal (cell phone, but we're talking EV-DO here) to go to listen on the particular channel, the AT has to send back a report on how fast it can receive data (based on SNR), before the base station can send the message. This all takes time - unnecessary overhead. But to send the text message on the paging channel means (in the case of EV-DO) sending it at the slowest possible data rate, since it doesn't know the SNR of the AT and thus the speed it can receive the transmission at. It has to default to the lowest possible speed.
EV-DO is great at sending large swaths of data at high rates. For short message services, it suffers the same overhead inefficiencies CDMA does.
In CDMA, the broadcast from one base-station is divided into many channels... 1 pilot, 1 sync, 1-8 paging, and up to 61 traffic channels (per frequency channel). Ignoring the pilot and sync, which allow the cell phones to find and synchronize the the system, we have paging channels where the phones watch for messages from the base station letting them know what channel to go to for an incoming call, and traffic channels for those calls.
Into this system, text messaging was bolted on as an afterthought. These are short messages, so they get sent out on the paging channel, since it isn't worth the time and effort to set up a traffic channel, only to tear it down again 80ms later, after the message has been transmitted.
Then came unlimited text messaging plans, and teenagers. "Hi sue! How R U?" [send] "Gr8! Saw Bob at park." [send] "Really? What was he wearing?" [send] "The shirt you bought him!" [send] "Awesome!" [send]. All of a sudden, relatively speaking, the text messaging system volume overloaded the paging channel's regular traffic. Network areas which only ran a single paging channel, suddenly needed to assign more channels to paging. Ok, not a problem, the standard allowed for up to 8. But in areas where a lot of phones were in use already had multiple paging channels. These find themselves in running out of paging channel bandwidth, while large swaths of traffic channels are not in use.
The problem isn't that text isn't cheap to send. It is the standard and the system were developed for voice traffic, and a tiny fraction was reserved for short data messages. The use case of teenagers with unlimited text messaging wasn't considered. To change the standard, and the systems which employ the standard - such as to add more paging channels - will require new phones and/or software upgrades to all existing phones out there, or they'll suddenly not work. It isn't just a matter of upgrading software in the network base-stations.
The only rising cost in text messages is the time (and money) out of the end-user's pocket, to have to read and delete spam messages sent to their mobile phones.
On further reflection, I guess we are both somewhat right. The 12 volt battery powers the computer which controls the hybrid system... and the headlights. Leave the headlights on, the 12V battery dies, and you can't turn on the computer which controls the starting of the car. Jump the 12V battery, and you can start the car. Ergo, you can jump start a Prius.
However, the High Voltage HV battery pack cannot be jump started. It provides the power to start the ICE. If it is discharged, you cannot jump start the car.
I've owned a 2002 Prius, and currently own a 2006 Prius. Neither car has a starter motor, that the 12 volt battery can spin, to start the ICE.
This link describes the starting and other operation of the hybrid system. The very first line under "Stationary Engine Start" reads: "To start the engine, MG1 is driven forward using electrical power from the high voltage battery..."
2004 Prius II - Emergency Response Guide. (http://techinfo.toyota.com/public/main/2ndprius.pdf)
Roadside Assistance
The Prius uses an electronic Gear Shift selector and an electronic P switch for Park. If the 12-Volt auxiliary battery is discharged or disconnected, the vehicle cannot be started or nor can it be shifted out of park. Most other roadside assistance operations may be handled like conventional Toyota vehicles.
I fail to see how making something "open source" will prevent it from being accredited. It may cost money, but the FOSS world has raised money before, while having their primary product remain open source.
The standard 12-volt battery is not used to start the car: the main hybrid battery does that. It is used to drive one of the two electric motors, which through the planetary gear system, causes the internal combustion engine (ICE) to turn over, at which point fuel is injected and the ICE starts.
The 12-volt battery is solely for the accessories. Notably, you can use it to jump start another vehicle, but you cannot use another vehicle's 12-volt battery to jump start a Prius.
He's called the "bandwidth hog," and it's his fault that streaming video on your computer looks more like a slide show than a movie. The major ISPs all tell a similar story: A mere 5 percent of their customers are using around 50 percent of the bandwidthâ"sometimes more during peak hours. While these "power users" are sharing three-gig movies and playing online games, poor granny is twiddling her thumbs waiting for Ancestry.com to load.
So you are trying to watching streaming video, and are calling other people bandwidth hogs???
As for my online games: while they tax the heck out of my CPU & GPU, the last time I checked the bandwidth requirements were a mere trickle... in the kbps range (though they do seem to demand low ping times).
The moon recedes at about 4cm/year, and is currently about 40,000,000,000 cm away. So, assuming the rate of recession was constant (which it wasn't), and started within 35 feet of the Earth (impossible), the tall dinosaurs (and the short ones) would have had to duck or dodge the moon as it passed by them 10,000,000,000 years ago... not 85 million years ago. As recent as 85 million years ago, the moon would have been a mere 1% closer to the Earth that it is now.
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong season. That isn't an easter egg; it's a Hallowe'en prank. An easter egg is something you have to look for in order to find. As for it being harmless fun, I suppose there aren't too many people who are orange/black colour-blind, but you still need to consider the unintended consequences.
Cue: Printer on fire error.
Yes, it was said by Susan Ivonova.
Glad to see they passed the test, or at least didn't blow up.
"No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. What? Look, somebody's got to have some damn perspective around here. Boom, sooner or later. BOOM!"
I doubt your WiFi network would be in trouble if they are jamming cellular & PCS frequencies. And "jamming" a cell phone network isn't a high-power endeavor. Put a micro-basestation operating inside the facility, and phones operating inside the facility will likely find it over more distant base stations outside. What you connect the micro basestation to is then up to you. If nothing, then all phone calls go into the bit-bucket.
It might be useful for car-to-car communication. The system could be preprogrammed with certain polite messages:
It would be an excellent application for cruise control. Set the car to the same speed as the car infront of me. (But is subject to speed measurement inaccuracies)
Also, it might indicate someone is coming up behind you at greater than your speed. For example, if you stop for a yellow light, and the car behind you doesn't seem to be ... or not decelerating fast enough.
Drawbacks: the police could set speed traps without the need for radar or ladar, rendering your wonderful new radar detector (where legal) useless. The cars would be broadcasting their speed to the camera - the camera would just need to photograph the plates.
Case in point, we can be in a low-density bubble. If we were in a high-density bubble, and things appeared closer than they were, and consequently appear to be slowing down much faster, and we might conclude the universe is closed (and will end in a gnab-gib). Then this bubble theory is proposed and suggest we are in a high-density bubble, and objections would again be raised that we're in a special place.
So we can argue ... low density bubbles would be "special", and high density bubbles would be "special", and average density would (because being perfectly average is unlikely) be "special".
Is being near the center of a bubble "special"? If we weren't, we may have noticed a gross disparity in the distance -vs- rate of recession of galaxies in the various directions, and concluded we were off to the side of the big-bang explosion. Theories that eschew being in a special place wouldn't be as strong, since, as we wouldn't have appeared to be at the center of the big bang, we wouldn't have looked for another explanation for the appearance of being special ... that is, everywhere appears to be the center of the big bang.
So, just because we aren't at the center of the solar-system, and aren't near the center of our galaxy, doesn't mean we don't happen to be near the center of our bubble. In fact, it is worse for us, since it makes it harder for us to understand the universe.
If they are preloading desktop environment files, while waiting for the user to type in a password, that can allow people to guess usernames!
Back in the days of yore, you could tell if you typed in a valid username by how long it took to validate the login attempt. A valid user with invalid password was reported immediately; an invalid user took longer. This was changed to always take a constant time, to prevent username guessing attacks.
With preloading desktop environment files, if a user is sitting at the machine, they could type in a username, and listen for disk activity. No activity? Try a different username!
And yes, I know, if the machine is not in a secure location, it isn't secure. But the preload behaviour for valid usernames may open up other attack vectors. For example, if the user environment files are on NFS, a flurry of network activity may signal a correctly guessed username.
Oh, they're definitely the ones causing the crisis, with unlimited text packages. Presumably, they'll do the switch part of bait-n-switch at some point (unlimited becomes say 50 msgs/day). Voice traffic will always have priority over text messaging, since they can delay that as much as needed, as long as the average text arrival rate is less than the average service rate, and their queues are deep enough to handle bursts.
I'll concede that the SMS system isn't at the breaking point yet, so the networks are at this point probably just gouging the customers. But the incremental cost of text messaging isn't zero for the networks, because the system just wasn't designed for it at the scale it is being used, and it'll need patching/fixing soon.
Perversely, long text messages (like e-mails, and what not) are just fine, especially for EV-DO. It is the fast, frequent, short crap that'll cause the problems.
For sending SMS messages, on the reverse link (mobile to network), there are accesses channels which correspond to the 1-8 paging channels. A mobile will start broadcasting its request periodically, a little stronger each time, until the network acknowledges the access attempt.
Currently, a traffic channel is encoded with a long-code specific to the individual cell phone assigned to the traffic channel. No problem, we can encode it with a general-purpose long code, known to all cell phones - this is just software. Each phone already has a slot it is assigned to wake up for to listen for paging channel messages (incoming calls). Do we wake the phone up at a different time slot, for these extra text messages? That means more awake time, and a shorter battery life. Or maybe listen on the extra pseudo-traffic channels when it wakes up for paging messages? That means extra decoder hardware. Maybe a new paging message that says "advanced phones, go listen on the pseudo-traffic channel 'cause I'm sending out an SMS to one or more of you."
These can be done, but it requires cooperation of the network providers, the handset manufactures, and the chip makers. Changes to the protocols go through committees to get approved and into the standards, and takes time. Some of these costs go into the cost of the phones, which the networks usually subsidize for their customers, so they need to make money to pay for it.
In the mean time, until the "fix" arrives (new phones, protocols, technology, ...) to prevent the existing system from cracking, the network providers can really only do one thing: Raise the user cost of the text messages, so to reduce the volume of text messages.
As an existing, bandwidth limited, inefficient channel for SMS, it follows the usual economic supply and demand forces. Prices will rise.
Well, the network operators are greedy, too. But sending SMS messages at ever increasing rates by customers isn't free for the networks. There is a serious SMS crisis looming on the horizon.
In this case, the SYNC channel message tells the phone how many paging channels there are, and only has 3 bits for this information. And the sync channel message doesn't have any versioning information, so they can't add another bit without breaking all existing phones.
Even with EV-DO (data optimized), text messaging still has a fundamental problem: it is short. If a traffic channel is brought up to send the message, the base station has to tell the access terminal (cell phone, but we're talking EV-DO here) to go to listen on the particular channel, the AT has to send back a report on how fast it can receive data (based on SNR), before the base station can send the message. This all takes time - unnecessary overhead. But to send the text message on the paging channel means (in the case of EV-DO) sending it at the slowest possible data rate, since it doesn't know the SNR of the AT and thus the speed it can receive the transmission at. It has to default to the lowest possible speed.
EV-DO is great at sending large swaths of data at high rates. For short message services, it suffers the same overhead inefficiencies CDMA does.
In CDMA, the broadcast from one base-station is divided into many channels ... 1 pilot, 1 sync, 1-8 paging, and up to 61 traffic channels (per frequency channel). Ignoring the pilot and sync, which allow the cell phones to find and synchronize the the system, we have paging channels where the phones watch for messages from the base station letting them know what channel to go to for an incoming call, and traffic channels for those calls.
Into this system, text messaging was bolted on as an afterthought. These are short messages, so they get sent out on the paging channel, since it isn't worth the time and effort to set up a traffic channel, only to tear it down again 80ms later, after the message has been transmitted.
Then came unlimited text messaging plans, and teenagers. "Hi sue! How R U?" [send] "Gr8! Saw Bob at park." [send] "Really? What was he wearing?" [send] "The shirt you bought him!" [send] "Awesome!" [send]. All of a sudden, relatively speaking, the text messaging system volume overloaded the paging channel's regular traffic. Network areas which only ran a single paging channel, suddenly needed to assign more channels to paging. Ok, not a problem, the standard allowed for up to 8. But in areas where a lot of phones were in use already had multiple paging channels. These find themselves in running out of paging channel bandwidth, while large swaths of traffic channels are not in use.
The problem isn't that text isn't cheap to send. It is the standard and the system were developed for voice traffic, and a tiny fraction was reserved for short data messages. The use case of teenagers with unlimited text messaging wasn't considered. To change the standard, and the systems which employ the standard - such as to add more paging channels - will require new phones and/or software upgrades to all existing phones out there, or they'll suddenly not work. It isn't just a matter of upgrading software in the network base-stations.
The only rising cost in text messages is the time (and money) out of the end-user's pocket, to have to read and delete spam messages sent to their mobile phones.
I'd like to play Global Thermal Nuclear War.
On further reflection, I guess we are both somewhat right. The 12 volt battery powers the computer which controls the hybrid system ... and the headlights. Leave the headlights on, the 12V battery dies, and you can't turn on the computer which controls the starting of the car. Jump the 12V battery, and you can start the car. Ergo, you can jump start a Prius.
However, the High Voltage HV battery pack cannot be jump started. It provides the power to start the ICE. If it is discharged, you cannot jump start the car.
I've owned a 2002 Prius, and currently own a 2006 Prius. Neither car has a starter motor, that the 12 volt battery can spin, to start the ICE.
This link describes the starting and other operation of the hybrid system. The very first line under "Stationary Engine Start" reads: "To start the engine, MG1 is driven forward using electrical power from the high voltage battery ..."
2004 Prius II - Emergency Response Guide. (http://techinfo.toyota.com/public/main/2ndprius.pdf)
Roadside Assistance
The Prius uses an electronic Gear Shift selector and an electronic P switch for Park. If the 12-Volt auxiliary battery is discharged or disconnected, the vehicle cannot be started or nor can it be shifted out of park. Most other roadside assistance operations may be handled like conventional Toyota vehicles.
I fail to see how making something "open source" will prevent it from being accredited. It may cost money, but the FOSS world has raised money before, while having their primary product remain open source.
No, that definitely belongs under the umbrella of geometry, although you can demonstrate applications of it in physics classes.
The standard 12-volt battery is not used to start the car: the main hybrid battery does that. It is used to drive one of the two electric motors, which through the planetary gear system, causes the internal combustion engine (ICE) to turn over, at which point fuel is injected and the ICE starts.
The 12-volt battery is solely for the accessories. Notably, you can use it to jump start another vehicle, but you cannot use another vehicle's 12-volt battery to jump start a Prius.
... global wetting?
I'm sure increasing the humidity of the Earth's atmosphere will have no unintended side-effects, like (say) the moistening of the Sahara Desert.
And the ocean will be otherwise unaffected by these amazing ships. No increase in noise level for the marine life at all.
So you are trying to watching streaming video, and are calling other people bandwidth hogs???
As for my online games: while they tax the heck out of my CPU & GPU, the last time I checked the bandwidth requirements were a mere trickle ... in the kbps range (though they do seem to demand low ping times).
The moon recedes at about 4cm/year, and is currently about 40,000,000,000 cm away. So, assuming the rate of recession was constant (which it wasn't), and started within 35 feet of the Earth (impossible), the tall dinosaurs (and the short ones) would have had to duck or dodge the moon as it passed by them 10,000,000,000 years ago ... not 85 million years ago. As recent as 85 million years ago, the moon would have been a mere 1% closer to the Earth that it is now.
Actually, it is closer to 50%, when you consider that we're looking at area. (50cm * 50cm) / (41cm * 41cm) = 1.487
Hey! That's my phone number!