As much as I hate to admit it the methods they use to store long file names in directory entries in a backward-compatible way are novel (for the time) and non obvious - hence patentable.
IANAL, but the patent would seem to apply to the VFAT driver in Linux. A driver that only reads long filenames but does not generate them should probably be be ok as one patent claims the method of writing and the other patent claims media formatted according to this method.
Microsoft are currently targeting makers of devices such as digital cameras and PDAs that use FAT on removable flash devices. At least cameras should be able escape the patent as the standard DCIM format only requires 8.3 filenames.
Numerical Python is great, but not necessarily suitable for this task. It's good when you're performing the same operation on the items of a vectors. When the vectors are long enough it indeed approaches the performance of C code. But in ray tracing every photon can take a different route depending on what it hits. I'm not so sure Numpy would perform nearly as well in this case.
Do you know what these two instructions are? They are for compatibility between the 8086 and the 8-bit 8085 processor. They load and store the flags into AH in the same bit positions as the 8085 so that SAHF+PUSH AX has the same format as pushing the Accumulator/Flags pair onto the stack on the 8085. Since the 8085 is an extension of the 8080 and 8008 architectures it makes these instructions compatible with the flags register format of the first 8 bit processor ever produced!
There were actually tools to automatically convert 8085 code to 8086 that used these instructions.
It should be relatively simple to modify any X-Prize class vehicle to be a reusable first stage for a nanosatellite launcher.
The upper stage can be a cheap and reliable expendable like Dan Moser's Comp-L design. Staging is done in a very benign environment: vacuum and zero G. You can literally open the door and push it out with a spring loaded device. A rotating platform can spin the upper stage first for stabilization. The upper stage and payload need no aerodynamic fairing and are subjected to very low loads. In vacuum it is possible to use a high expansion ratio nozzle to get high Isp even from a low pressure engine with pressure fed propellants.
Most of the 1G storage quota will be taken by large attachments of movies and other stuff that gets forwarded around. Google are figuring out that if they merge identical copies the actual average storage consumption per user is going to be far less than 100mb.
Please don't use straight SHA1 - it requires downloading the entire file to verify.
Bittorrent and some other file sharing networks split the file into chunks and keep metadata with the hashes of chunks. The problem with this idea is how big to make the chunks: too big and you need to download a big chunk before you can verify. Too small and the list of hashes itself takes too long to download (the hashes are what makes.torrent files relatively big).
I think the solution should be to use hash trees. Split the file into relatively small chunks (1k?) and calculate their hashes. Now take every two consecutive hashes and hash them. Repeat with the hash results from the previous step until you have a tree with a single hash at its root. The root hash represents the entire file just like an MD5 of SHA1 sum. The difference is that with a small amount of metadata as hints you can verify any part of the file without downloading the entire file. All you need is a short (log n) chain of hashes leading down to the root hash. The server will trickle the hash information interleaved with the download and the client will verify it on the fly and never need to write a single byte to the disk before it's cryptographically verified.
The good parts are the implementation: multiple interpreters (no globals), stackless, gc running in separate thread and generally a clean implementation from scratch.
The bad part is from a language design point of view it's a hodge-podge of small yet significant changes from Python, almost none of them, IMHO, an improvement over Python. Those that may be considered a slight improvement are hardly worth breaking compatibility for.
Significant case? Another type of comment? for i in 7 ? a differnt keyword to define generators? Return self by default? removal of class statements for javascript-like object orientation? WTF?
The Python implementation could definitely use an overhaul. The language itself has a few minor warts but strikes a fantastically well-balanced sweet spot that will be difficult to beat. I just can't see the real justification for these changes other than "because I can".
If they insist on using a Microsoft OS at least the could use Windows XP Embedded.
It's a componentized version of Windows XP with a set of tools to customize it, remove any unnecessary components and prepare system images. It also has tricks like running from read-only media and intercepting message boxes that end users should not see.
It's even cheaper (for a moderate number of licenses).
Pendragon Pictures is also planning a War Of the Worlds movie. Their concept art looks quite cool.
They claim that their originally planned "modernized" version had too many similarities to the World Trade Center attack so they pushed it back to rework the script, this time making it an accurate adaptation of the Wells classic story placed in its original 1898 setting.
I wonder if the 800 lb gorilla (Spielberg/Cruise) might cause them to change their plans again.
I can't seem to find it now, but Jordin Kare (of LLNL) had a nice presentation showing that a space elevator isn't really any cheaper than a RLV - even under when the space elevator assumes not-yet-existent materials like carbon nanotube composites with tensile strength approaching that of the raw fiber and the RLV is built only using existing technology.
Many proponents of certain technologies forget to take into account that hypothetical advancements required for their favorite technology will also benefit competing technologies. For example - carbon nanotube composites will make superb structural material for a high fuel fraction RLV, and it doesn't take tens of thousands of kilometers of the stuff.
It's easy to omit the short employment periods without leaving conspicuous gaps by listing employment periods by year instead of using actual dates.
It is perfectly legitimate to leave out some of the places where you worked. I have to leave out a few things to keep my resume in reasonable length. This is not because I have worked in so many places but because there are two where I prefer to put more details about specific projects and achievements.
Well, I remember a stack of 8 2k SRAM chips to get 16k without taking too much board space. All the pins in the DIP package were soldered together except the chip selects. They were individually tied to a decoder chip (74S138) soldered vertically to the stack.
Funny how you think the private sector should get more taxpayer money...
The total money invested by X-Prize contestants far exceeds the $10 million prize. The prize system can act as a very effective amplifier for taxpayer money!
The OFDM modulation scheme for DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast) can transmit multiple copies of the same signal on the same channel and a receiver can use the sum of all transmissions to get the best reception.
This lets you, for example. receive the DAB signal in your car where there is a line-of-sight to the satellite and when you enter a city with its obscuring buildings the satellite signal is augmented by a local repeater that receives the satellite signal and then retransmits it on the same frequency.
What I really want is better acoustics and I'm willing to pay for it. I'm willing to pay in price, size and weight. Why should a wired phone that costs $6 at Kmart sound better than the newest cellular model? I want a phone made for talking, not one in which the acoustics seem like an afterthought.
Longer battery life and durability is important. I want a simple and uncluttered user interface.I want to be able to access my phonebook and recent calls with a thumbwheel UI and be able to make calls with one hand. I don't care if the screen is small and black and white but I need good contrast - it should be readable in direct sunlight.
Small size is overrated. My wallet is bigger, thicker and heavier than my cellphone and I have no problem carrying it around in my pocket.
It's a general-purpuse IDE that happens to be implmented in
Let's see: you want to build an IDE. You want to write it in a high-level language with garbage collection. You want high performance. You don't want to use a non-mainstream language like Smalltalk. There aren't so many options.
So you pick Java.
The GUI APIs suck. So you build a new one from scratch and create SWT.
The fact that Eclipse is written in Java is not supposed to be of interest to its users except the few power-users that write extensions. The fact that it can be used to write Java code is irrelevant, too. After all, you can write Java in Emacs or J# in Microsoft Visual Studio.
Since when has the regurgitation of press releases been upgraded to "reporting"?
Anyway, it's just the old voice stress detector that keeps coming up again and again. Yes, it can analyse stress in a person's voice with an accuracy somewhat better than tossing a coin. Some problems are that stress can be caused by lots of reasons other than telling a lie, many people can lie without any significant stress and finally, it's almost useless without knowing the baseline values for that person.
Voice stress analysis is nearly useless for any specific case, but it can still be useful statistically. For example, knowing which of your customer service representatives tend to have higher stress levels in their voice (or in the caller's voice) at the end of the call compared to the baseline level at the beginning of the call.
And yes, given that increases in technology in the last 20 years have consistently and greatly improved Hubble with each servicing mission.
Yes, but at what cost? Each shuttle mission costs about half a billion. If someone actually had to pay that amount out of their bugest there is no chance in hell that a single service mission would go up. The only reason it seems to make sense is because the incremental cost for each shuttle mission is much lower and the real costs of keeping the standing army needed to keep the shuttle going are coming from other budgets. When viewed this way, a serviceable space telescope is a "make work" project.
Given the current set of circumstances it seems a shame not to send the upgrade you have nearly ready. And I can certainly understand your personal angle on it.
But, in retrospect, was the current design of the HST a rational choice? Did it really make sense to make it bigger, heavier and more expensive and with huge parts than can be serviced while wearing oven mitts? Did it really make sense to send it to a low earth orbit (reachable by the shuttle) where atomic oxygen damage is greater? Was it built this way just to make work for the shuttle?
I've heard estimates that it would have have been possible to build two or even three telescopes not designed for servicing and send them on expendable launchers for less than half the cost of the HST plus the stupendous cost of 5 shuttle missions? (1 launch + 4 service).
Hindsight is always 20/20. You could claim that assuming a truly cheap and reusable space shuttle it did make sense at the time to build a serviceable space telescope. But there is evidence that NASA never really believed their own claims about the cost savings of the shuttle. Hubble, the space station, the subsidized "commercial" launches on the shuttle - they were all used to justify the shuttle and were ultimately its victims.
Hey, be glad. They're going to trash the space shuttle program.
Not only that, the plan has no replacement in sight. X-37 is canned. Next generation launch vehicle is canned. That's excellent news! NASA is finally getting out of the transportation business after causing unimaginable damage by subsidizing commercial payloads on the shuttle (prior to the Challenger crash) and planning, spending millions of dollars and then cancelling at least seven shuttle replacements since then. With Uncle Sam and his tax dollars as your maybe-maybe-not competitor, what investor in his right mind would invest in the orbital transport business? With Uncle Sam and his tax dollars as a customer things start to look better for the first time in 30 years. Of course, lots of launches will go to the Usual Suspect (EELVs) and to "International participation" (i.e. Soyuz and Ariane) but some crumbs will fall in the direction of SpaceX and other entrepreneurs which will hopefully embarrass the Usual Suspects as much as possible with their costs.
The biggest advantage that the hubble had was the lack an atmosphere.
Adaptive optics have really improved in the years since Hubble went up and largely closed the gap in image clarity. Here on Earth you can afford much larger apertures when you don't have to think about the thousands of dollars per lb for lifting it up to space.
Going above the atmosphere is important for wavelengths that are absorbed by the atmosphere like certain infrared bands. Surprise! That is exactly the mission of the James Webb space telescope. The downside is that it won't be generating any pretty "true color" images to hang on your wall.
Slashdot Mirror
As much as I hate to admit it the methods they use to store long file names in directory entries in a backward-compatible way are novel (for the time) and non obvious - hence patentable.
IANAL, but the patent would seem to apply to the VFAT driver in Linux. A driver that only reads long filenames but does not generate them should probably be be ok as one patent claims the method of writing and the other patent claims media formatted according to this method.
Microsoft are currently targeting makers of devices such as digital cameras and PDAs that use FAT on removable flash devices. At least cameras should be able escape the patent as the standard DCIM format only requires 8.3 filenames.
Numerical Python is great, but not necessarily suitable for this task. It's good when you're performing the same operation on the items of a vectors. When the vectors are long enough it indeed approaches the performance of C code. But in ray tracing every photon can take a different route depending on what it hits. I'm not so sure Numpy would perform nearly as well in this case.
Do you know what these two instructions are? They are for compatibility between the 8086 and the 8-bit 8085 processor. They load and store the flags into AH in the same bit positions as the 8085 so that SAHF+PUSH AX has the same format as pushing the Accumulator/Flags pair onto the stack on the 8085. Since the 8085 is an extension of the 8080 and 8008 architectures it makes these instructions compatible with the flags register format of the first 8 bit processor ever produced!
There were actually tools to automatically convert 8085 code to 8086 that used these instructions.
It should be relatively simple to modify any X-Prize class vehicle to be a reusable first stage for a nanosatellite launcher.
The upper stage can be a cheap and reliable expendable like Dan Moser's Comp-L design. Staging is done in a very benign environment: vacuum and zero G. You can literally open the door and push it out with a spring loaded device. A rotating platform can spin the upper stage first for stabilization. The upper stage and payload need no aerodynamic fairing and are subjected to very low loads. In vacuum it is possible to use a high expansion ratio nozzle to get high Isp even from a low pressure engine with pressure fed propellants.
Most of the 1G storage quota will be taken by large attachments of movies and other stuff that gets forwarded around. Google are figuring out that if they merge identical copies the actual average storage consumption per user is going to be far less than 100mb.
Please read the rest for a more detailed discussion of on-the-fly cryptographic verifications.
Please don't use straight SHA1 - it requires downloading the entire file to verify.
.torrent files relatively big).
Bittorrent and some other file sharing networks split the file into chunks and keep metadata with the hashes of chunks. The problem with this idea is how big to make the chunks: too big and you need to download a big chunk before you can verify. Too small and the list of hashes itself takes too long to download (the hashes are what makes
I think the solution should be to use hash trees. Split the file into relatively small chunks (1k?) and calculate their hashes. Now take every two consecutive hashes and hash them. Repeat with the hash results from the previous step until you have a tree with a single hash at its root. The root hash represents the entire file just like an MD5 of SHA1 sum. The difference is that with a small amount of metadata as hints you can verify any part of the file without downloading the entire file. All you need is a short (log n) chain of hashes leading down to the root hash. The server will trickle the hash information interleaved with the download and the client will verify it on the fly and never need to write a single byte to the disk before it's cryptographically verified.
The good parts are the implementation: multiple interpreters (no globals), stackless, gc running in separate thread and generally a clean implementation from scratch.
The bad part is from a language design point of view it's a hodge-podge of small yet significant changes from Python, almost none of them, IMHO, an improvement over Python. Those that may be considered a slight improvement are hardly worth breaking compatibility for.
Significant case? Another type of comment? for i in 7 ? a differnt keyword to define generators? Return self by default? removal of class statements for javascript-like object orientation? WTF?
The Python implementation could definitely use an overhaul. The language itself has a few minor warts but strikes a fantastically well-balanced sweet spot that will be difficult to beat. I just can't see the real justification for these changes other than "because I can".
It lets the programmer handle system popup message in any way including the one you have described.
If they insist on using a Microsoft OS at least the could use Windows XP Embedded.
It's a componentized version of Windows XP with a set of tools to customize it, remove any unnecessary components and prepare system images. It also has tricks like running from read-only media and intercepting message boxes that end users should not see.
It's even cheaper (for a moderate number of licenses).
Pendragon Pictures is also planning a War Of the Worlds movie. Their concept art looks quite cool.
They claim that their originally planned "modernized" version had too many similarities to the World Trade Center attack so they pushed it back to rework the script, this time making it an accurate adaptation of the Wells classic story placed in its original 1898 setting.
I wonder if the 800 lb gorilla (Spielberg/Cruise) might cause them to change their plans again.
Now I'm trying to figure out why I couldn't find it in a few minutes of googling...
I can't seem to find it now, but Jordin Kare (of LLNL) had a nice presentation showing that a space elevator isn't really any cheaper than a RLV - even under when the space elevator assumes not-yet-existent materials like carbon nanotube composites with tensile strength approaching that of the raw fiber and the RLV is built only using existing technology.
Many proponents of certain technologies forget to take into account that hypothetical advancements required for their favorite technology will also benefit competing technologies. For example - carbon nanotube composites will make superb structural material for a high fuel fraction RLV, and it doesn't take tens of thousands of kilometers of the stuff.
It's easy to omit the short employment periods without leaving conspicuous gaps by listing employment periods by year instead of using actual dates.
It is perfectly legitimate to leave out some of the places where you worked. I have to leave out a few things to keep my resume in reasonable length. This is not because I have worked in so many places but because there are two where I prefer to put more details about specific projects and achievements.
Well, I remember a stack of 8 2k SRAM chips to get 16k without taking too much board space. All the pins in the DIP package were soldered together except the chip selects. They were individually tied to a decoder chip (74S138) soldered vertically to the stack.
Does this qualify as prior art ?-)
Funny how you think the private sector should get more taxpayer money...
The total money invested by X-Prize contestants far exceeds the $10 million prize. The prize system can act as a very effective amplifier for taxpayer money!
...it is far removed from my utopian Star Trek TNG tendencies...
What do you suppose is the financing source of all the impressive space infrastructure you see in Start Trek TNG? Taxes?
The OFDM modulation scheme for DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast) can transmit multiple copies of the same signal on the same channel and a receiver can use the sum of all transmissions to get the best reception.
This lets you, for example. receive the DAB signal in your car where there is a line-of-sight to the satellite and when you enter a city with its obscuring buildings the satellite signal is augmented by a local repeater that receives the satellite signal and then retransmits it on the same frequency.
What I really want is better acoustics and I'm willing to pay for it. I'm willing to pay in price, size and weight. Why should a wired phone that costs $6 at Kmart sound better than the newest cellular model? I want a phone made for talking, not one in which the acoustics seem like an afterthought.
Longer battery life and durability is important. I want a simple and uncluttered user interface.I want to be able to access my phonebook and recent calls with a thumbwheel UI and be able to make calls with one hand. I don't care if the screen is small and black and white but I need good contrast - it should be readable in direct sunlight.
Small size is overrated. My wallet is bigger, thicker and heavier than my cellphone and I have no problem carrying it around in my pocket.
It's a general-purpuse IDE that happens to be implmented in
Let's see: you want to build an IDE. You want to write it in a high-level language with garbage collection. You want high performance. You don't want to use a non-mainstream language like Smalltalk. There aren't so many options.
So you pick Java.
The GUI APIs suck. So you build a new one from scratch and create SWT.
The fact that Eclipse is written in Java is not supposed to be of interest to its users except the few power-users that write extensions. The fact that it can be used to write Java code is irrelevant, too. After all, you can write Java in Emacs or J# in Microsoft Visual Studio.
Sun, get off IBM's back.
The EE Times is reporting on...
Since when has the regurgitation of press releases been upgraded to "reporting"?
Anyway, it's just the old voice stress detector that keeps coming up again and again. Yes, it can analyse stress in a person's voice with an accuracy somewhat better than tossing a coin. Some problems are that stress can be caused by lots of reasons other than telling a lie, many people can lie without any significant stress and finally, it's almost useless without knowing the baseline values for that person.
Voice stress analysis is nearly useless for any specific case, but it can still be useful statistically. For example, knowing which of your customer service representatives tend to have higher stress levels in their voice (or in the caller's voice) at the end of the call compared to the baseline level at the beginning of the call.
And yes, given that increases in technology in the last 20 years have consistently and greatly improved Hubble with each servicing mission.
Yes, but at what cost? Each shuttle mission costs about half a billion. If someone actually had to pay that amount out of their bugest there is no chance in hell that a single service mission would go up. The only reason it seems to make sense is because the incremental cost for each shuttle mission is much lower and the real costs of keeping the standing army needed to keep the shuttle going are coming from other budgets. When viewed this way, a serviceable space telescope is a "make work" project.
Given the current set of circumstances it seems a shame not to send the upgrade you have nearly ready. And I can certainly understand your personal angle on it.
But, in retrospect, was the current design of the HST a rational choice? Did it really make sense to make it bigger, heavier and more expensive and with huge parts than can be serviced while wearing oven mitts? Did it really make sense to send it to a low earth orbit (reachable by the shuttle) where atomic oxygen damage is greater? Was it built this way just to make work for the shuttle?
I've heard estimates that it would have have been possible to build two or even three telescopes not designed for servicing and send them on expendable launchers for less than half the cost of the HST plus the stupendous cost of 5 shuttle missions? (1 launch + 4 service).
Hindsight is always 20/20. You could claim that assuming a truly cheap and reusable space shuttle it did make sense at the time to build a serviceable space telescope. But there is evidence that NASA never really believed their own claims about the cost savings of the shuttle. Hubble, the space station, the subsidized "commercial" launches on the shuttle - they were all used to justify the shuttle and were ultimately its victims.
Hey, be glad. They're going to trash the space shuttle program.
Not only that, the plan has no replacement in sight. X-37 is canned. Next generation launch vehicle is canned. That's excellent news! NASA is finally getting out of the transportation business after causing unimaginable damage by subsidizing commercial payloads on the shuttle (prior to the Challenger crash) and planning, spending millions of dollars and then cancelling at least seven shuttle replacements since then. With Uncle Sam and his tax dollars as your maybe-maybe-not competitor, what investor in his right mind would invest in the orbital transport business? With Uncle Sam and his tax dollars as a customer things start to look better for the first time in 30 years. Of course, lots of launches will go to the Usual Suspect (EELVs) and to "International participation" (i.e. Soyuz and Ariane) but some crumbs will fall in the direction of SpaceX and other entrepreneurs which will hopefully embarrass the Usual Suspects as much as possible with their costs.
"...Pursue commercial opportunities for providing transportation and other services..."
The biggest advantage that the hubble had was the lack an atmosphere.
Adaptive optics have really improved in the years since Hubble went up and largely closed the gap in image clarity. Here on Earth you can afford much larger apertures when you don't have to think about the thousands of dollars per lb for lifting it up to space.
Going above the atmosphere is important for wavelengths that are absorbed by the atmosphere like certain infrared bands. Surprise! That is exactly the mission of the James Webb space telescope. The downside is that it won't be generating any pretty "true color" images to hang on your wall.