To be able to patent any sort of digital data capture device, but with the addition of compression, is folly.
What format did this first Mavica use? The patent is not on the addition of compression - it's on letting the user select the use of a standard format common on Macs (PICT) or on PCs (I think it was PCX at the time) depending on what machine the user was expecting to read the pictures on.
Yes, it's a lame patent, but it was novel and nonobvious at the time.
Do you have evidence, in the form of an actual product or description in a publication that any of the following was invented prior to November 1990:
A digital camera equipped with a removable digital media and capable of storing the captured image in one of several user-selectable data formats.
A digital camera as in #1 with an option for letting the user select the compression ratio or other compression algorithm parameters.
A digital camera as in #1 with the removable media being a floppy disk.
These are what I believe to be their major claims. Remember that November 1990 is before the previous gulf war. You could access the Internet (if you were in a connected university) but there was no web. My PC was 8088-based and the world of music was still trying to recover from the 80s.
The pictures include an "Obsolete Media Festival" with a guy who makes music with an Atari 2600, Commodore C64, and a dot-matrix printer
A dot-matrix printer? Interesting. I remember a program for the C64 that played the Blue Danube - through the floppy disk drive. It downloaded the code into the drive and you could actually turn off the computer and it still kept playing.
It worked by rapidly moving the head back and forth. I guess it wasn't too healthy for the drive.
Management may make one last round of layoffs, if really necessary, and then set a challenging goal and declare that there will be no more layoffs for one year (unless someone is really not getting any work done, of course).
a video record of what you're shooting at... hmmm maybe this will be the advance in technology that can bring the gun rights people and the gun control people together. i think accountability is the most important thing; if you are responsible you can have a gun if you want.
Won't work. If untrackable guns are outlawed only criminals will have untrackable guns.
This gun is designed to be of benefit to the individual owner. The fingerprint activation is good to ensure you will not be shot with your own gun. The camera should help you in court when your target (or his relatives) sue you and you want to prove it really was self-defense.
I have a Casio F-5 watch that is nearly 20 years old. It's one of the earliest LCD watches ever produced and does nothing but show the time. The amazing thing is that it's still running - with the same battery!
The band has rotted long ago and it's just sitting in my drawer, ticking away. It's even quite accurate. It had a y2k bug - it thought it was not a leap yer.
Now that virtually all WHOIS clients support redirection to the WHOIS servers of various registrars using the "Whois Server:" line it should be easy for whois.internic.net to send redirections to ccTLD whios server so we could finally have a single WHOIS server that answers all requests.
Of course, with the current situation I don't expect they would actually implement such as scheme.
Unfortunately with all they hype, the statements that Ginger aka IT would "change the way future cities are designed," good ideas like the wheelchair were lost
Get up and pick something you believe in, work your ass off, face all the naysayers and give it your best shot. You must be enthusiastic about what you are trying do. Try to get other people excited about it. If you fail, people will call this excitement "hype" and say they always knew it would fail. If you succeed (the same) people will call you a visionary and say they always believed in you.
It ain't over 'til its over. In 15 years the streets of some cities may be full of Segways or one of its descendents or clones. City planners may yet have to design them to accomodate it.
As the other reply mentions, you'll need parallel walls for standing waves to form
The only cavity that will not have standing waves is one with walls that completely absorb sound. Any reflection will create some kind of standing wave. It's true that a cavity with a complex shape is far less likely to have such deep nulls or as many nulls as a cavity with parallel walls. In cavities with parallel walls standing waves are governed by a simple set of equations. Other shapes may require numerical analysis to find their resonant modes.
This bulb shape definitely doesn't have parallel walls. It was designed using numeric optimization of differential equations. It is capable of creating standing waves of such high amplitude that they go way into the nonlinear acoustic zone and can be used as a pump with almost no moving parts.
Should you fear Google? No, not until such time a law is passed - and actively enforced - that you must use it for every search, and all other search engines must cease their operations.
Should you fear Microsoft? No, not until such time a law is passed - and actively enforced - that you must use it for every document, and all other office application vendor must cease their operations.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that can be arranged.
A harmless electrical shock can be very painful and should definitely improve the realism and raise the stakes.
To be able to patent any sort of digital data capture device, but with the addition of compression, is folly.
What format did this first Mavica use? The patent is not on the addition of compression - it's on letting the user select the use of a standard format common on Macs (PICT) or on PCs (I think it was PCX at the time) depending on what machine the user was expecting to read the pictures on.
Yes, it's a lame patent, but it was novel and nonobvious at the time.
These are what I believe to be their major claims. Remember that November 1990 is before the previous gulf war. You could access the Internet (if you were in a connected university) but there was no web. My PC was 8088-based and the world of music was still trying to recover from the 80s.
IANAPA, but think they may have a valid patent.
Portage does have a binary package format. It might be interesting if pkg was replaced by rpm while keeping the portage ebuilds tree.
The pictures include an "Obsolete Media Festival" with a guy who makes music with an Atari 2600, Commodore C64, and a dot-matrix printer
A dot-matrix printer? Interesting. I remember a program for the C64 that played the Blue Danube - through the floppy disk drive. It downloaded the code into the drive and you could actually turn off the computer and it still kept playing.
It worked by rapidly moving the head back and forth. I guess it wasn't too healthy for the drive.
There is almost nothing worse for morale.
Management may make one last round of layoffs, if really necessary, and then set a challenging goal and declare that there will be no more layoffs for one year (unless someone is really not getting any work done, of course).
From Painless Bug Tracking:
"""
It's pretty easy to remember the rule for a good bug report. Every good bug report needs exactly three things.
1. Steps to reproduce,
2. What you expected to see, and
3. What you saw instead.
Seems easy, right? Maybe not. As a programmer, people regularly assign me bugs where they left out one piece or another.
"""
the wallpaper is similar but not identical.
Yes, but where are the Teletubbies?
a video record of what you're shooting at... hmmm maybe this will be the advance in technology that can bring the gun rights people and the gun control people together. i think accountability is the most important thing; if you are responsible you can have a gun if you want.
Won't work. If untrackable guns are outlawed only criminals will have untrackable guns.
This gun is designed to be of benefit to the individual owner. The fingerprint activation is good to ensure you will not be shot with your own gun. The camera should help you in court when your target (or his relatives) sue you and you want to prove it really was self-defense.
D: the humble start of an opening towards the IBM SNA protocols
D: libmodem author
D: IBM Turboways 25 ATM Device Driver
"First post!"
There's tons of that all over the net. Much of it makes Elf's work seem worthy of a Pulitzer by comparison.
iSCSI already looks pretty serial to me when it runs over gigabit ethernet.
I have a Casio F-5 watch that is nearly 20 years old. It's one of the earliest LCD watches ever produced and does nothing but show the time. The amazing thing is that it's still running - with the same battery!
The band has rotted long ago and it's just sitting in my drawer, ticking away. It's even quite accurate. It had a y2k bug - it thought it was not a leap yer.
Now that virtually all WHOIS clients support redirection to the WHOIS servers of various registrars using the "Whois Server:" line it should be easy for whois.internic.net to send redirections to ccTLD whios server so we could finally have a single WHOIS server that answers all requests.
Of course, with the current situation I don't expect they would actually implement such as scheme.
In the middle ages, the world would have seemed to be utterly unchanged
One look at the old roman ruins was enough to be convince anyone that the world is not unchanged - it's clearly in a decline.
Sorry... Bad wordplay puns are a reflexive reaction.
I am not under the alcafluence of incahol, some thinkle peop I am. It's just the drunker I sit, the longer I get.
Unfortunately with all they hype, the statements that Ginger aka IT would "change the way future cities are designed," good ideas like the wheelchair were lost
Get up and pick something you believe in, work your ass off, face all the naysayers and give it your best shot. You must be enthusiastic about what you are trying do. Try to get other people excited about it. If you fail, people will call this excitement "hype" and say they always knew it would fail. If you succeed (the same) people will call you a visionary and say they always believed in you.
It ain't over 'til its over. In 15 years the streets of some cities may be full of Segways or one of its descendents or clones. City planners may yet have to design them to accomodate it.
As the other reply mentions, you'll need parallel walls for standing waves to form
The only cavity that will not have standing waves is one with walls that completely absorb sound. Any reflection will create some kind of standing wave. It's true that a cavity with a complex shape is far less likely to have such deep nulls or as many nulls as a cavity with parallel walls. In cavities with parallel walls standing waves are governed by a simple set of equations. Other shapes may require numerical analysis to find their resonant modes.
This bulb shape definitely doesn't have parallel walls. It was designed using numeric optimization of differential equations. It is capable of creating standing waves of such high amplitude that they go way into the nonlinear acoustic zone and can be used as a pump with almost no moving parts.
The whole point of a "Basic Input/Output System" is for, well, basic I/O. It was meant to be a thin layer between the OS and the hardware.
I always thought BIOS stands for "Built-In Obsolete Software".
Should you fear Google? No, not until such time a law is passed - and actively enforced - that you must use it for every search, and all other search engines must cease their operations.
Should you fear Microsoft? No, not until such time a law is passed - and actively enforced - that you must use it for every document, and all other office application vendor must cease their operations.
Please don't say that word again, ok?
Consider this:
Titan is said to have an ocean of hydrocarbons.
Carbonaceous asteroids and meteorites contain asphalt-like material (I guess the lighter hydrocarbons just boiled away into space).
And we're supposed to believe that the source of terrestrial petroleum must be organic? We know better now. It's time to revise the old theories.
Would you like to play Pyroball?
Grand Flaming Marshmallow Balrog Contest