'where are the stereo MP3 recorders? They've been chilled into nonexistence by the threat of lawsuits. The ones that claim to record, record only "voice quality monaural".'
Actually I think this is more a technology problem - even an encoder as fast as LAME needs something like 300 MIPS to encode 128KB/s stereo mp3s in real time - a little more than you'll find in the average mp3 player!
This is why all the "recording" mp3 players (that I've seen, anyway) use "voice quality" 8kHz 8 bit ADPCM mono, or similar.
Einstein won his prize "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" - see the relevant page on the Nobel website.
A system whereby goods and services may be paid for or exchanged without the need for electronic facilitation systems. This patent covers use of a physical exchange medium hereafter referred to as "money", along with its associated exchange mechanisms (electronic and physical) and a means of determining the "value" of said goods and services known as the "free market economy".
I don't see an option there for "Heckle against restrictive cryptography regulations". I suppose they dropped key-escrow, but giving the police powers to serve a "gimme yer keys or go to gaol" order doesn't sound much better...:-(
I reckon the AMEX engineers said "we'll implement a 'numberless' card that'll work a bit like GSM authorisation - there will be a secret number on the chip that gets hashed with a random number sent out from the transaction server, which compares it with the same hash sent from the AMEX mega-secure servers. There'll be no way to read the secret number from the card or the mega-secure servers, and you'll need to snoop six gazillion transactions to work it out."
Management said "It's an AMEX card. Put a number on it."
Let's hope that this clears up the situation about the whole trademark thing a bit. Personally I think it's fairly safe to cut back a bit on the Red-Hat=Microsoft-II paranoia. At least until they and SuSe start battling it out with light-sabres on the plains of Europe!:-)
The only way to answer all the questioning articles like this one is for our tame kernel hackers to beaver away until Linux outperforms all other NOSes on all possible hardware configurations, while supporting all known harware addons and running every piece of software written since 1943.
Bollocks. Let's pretend Mr Foo is a well adjusted person and accurately judges that Foo jr. is old enough to watch violent films without pissing his pants / becoming a psychopath. That doesn't mean that Mr Bar, a man with a dodgy background suffering from anxiety about his own social inadequacy should be allowed to scare his children to death / turn them into serial killers by giving them violent / scary films to keep them quiet.
It may seem harsh, it may be an infringement of Mr Foo's rights, it may even be an infringement of Mr Bar's rights, but the state has to make an inadequate decision and set a meaningless number and say that once children's age has passed that number they can do this / that.
How about a separate slashdot section for America-only stories like this one*? Far be it for me to deny the citizens of a country a forum in which to moan about their democracy (or impending lack of it), and I realise that/. coverage of other-national stories like the current farce taking place in Australia regarding net-nannying is pretty good, but surely this kind of story is much more for national than international consumption.
*with, of course the few exceptions posting below to contradict me (:-) ), this story is only really of interest to Americans...
I normally conveniently filter Jon Katz out, but thought I'd read him again for once. When my eyes once more lit on those trademark sweeping, groundless statements of dubious veracity (such as "the music industry is in near-meltdown over unpaid MP3 downloads and other forms of piracy") I realised once more why it is that several billion impoverished geeks each month commit suicide as a result of reading his articles.
...based on past experience of BBC "theme nights", the "new material" is more likely to be a few sketches that a new episode. Still, the more Monty Python in the world, the better...
It's one of the worst written technical papers I've ever seen, and that's saying something.
I thought that the problem with IPv4 was not that we were going to run out of unassigned numbers, but that back when the internet was two calculators and a bit of string, they practically handed out class A address space to any household pet that could verifiably operate a cat-flap, and now can't get it back.
If we've got to change something, then why not go the whole hog and go for IPv6: ready to give an IP address to every nanobot in your entire starship fab...
Personally, I don't plan to base my opinions about matters computing on the opinions of Iowan judges, excellent people though I'm sure they are. My Casio wristwatch is a more general-purpose device than the ABC was, and yet I don't try to claim it as a "computer".
There's more info about Colossus here, where they make the obvious point that "The question of what is the worlds first computer is less a question of history than a question of definition."
My personal vote goes to the "Manchester Baby", which has an extensive homepage all to itself.
Of course, Babbage can claim not only to have invented the first computer, but also the first printer - they're in the process of building it at the Science Museum in London (UK) right now. No reference to it on their web page, unfortunately.
...are nothing like one another, except at the most basic, functional level. (ie they have a hole in one end, some sort of focussing device and some way of recording what's going on). They both frequently contain big cylindrical bits. That's about it, though.
Slashdot Mirror
'where are the stereo MP3 recorders? They've been chilled into nonexistence by the threat of lawsuits. The ones that claim to record, record only "voice quality monaural".'
Actually I think this is more a technology problem - even an encoder as fast as LAME needs something like 300 MIPS to encode 128KB/s stereo mp3s in real time - a little more than you'll find in the average mp3 player!
This is why all the "recording" mp3 players (that I've seen, anyway) use "voice quality" 8kHz 8 bit ADPCM mono, or similar.
Einstein won his prize "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" - see the relevant page on the Nobel website.
but only if you live in the USA - the UK (at least) has no such concept...
Perhaps they're having technical problems, but when I searched for "linux", it didn't find any matches at all...
The (Sunday) Times is owned by Murdoch's News Corporation - if they don't have a stake in some such money-spinner, I'd be amazed...
A system whereby goods and services may be paid for or exchanged without the need for electronic facilitation systems. This patent covers use of a physical exchange medium hereafter referred to as "money", along with its associated exchange mechanisms (electronic and physical) and a means of determining the "value" of said goods and services known as the "free market economy".
Obviously you know different young British people to me.
Would being billed twice mean that you got your rubbish collected twice? :-)
That link doesn't seem to work, I'm afraid
Have a look at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office's breakdown by country at http://www.fco.gov.uk/travel/dynpag e.asp?Page=144
I don't see an option there for "Heckle against restrictive cryptography regulations". I suppose they dropped key-escrow, but giving the police powers to serve a "gimme yer keys or go to gaol" order doesn't sound much better... :-(
I reckon the AMEX engineers said "we'll implement a 'numberless' card that'll work a bit like GSM authorisation - there will be a secret number on the chip that gets hashed with a random number sent out from the transaction server, which compares it with the same hash sent from the AMEX mega-secure servers. There'll be no way to read the secret number from the card or the mega-secure servers, and you'll need to snoop six gazillion transactions to work it out."
Management said "It's an AMEX card. Put a number on it."
:-)
Let's hope that this clears up the situation about the whole trademark thing a bit. Personally I think it's fairly safe to cut back a bit on the Red-Hat=Microsoft-II paranoia. At least until they and SuSe start battling it out with light-sabres on the plains of Europe! :-)
The only way to answer all the questioning articles like this one is for our tame kernel hackers to beaver away until Linux outperforms all other NOSes on all possible hardware configurations, while supporting all known harware addons and running every piece of software written since 1943.
:-)
Get to it people!
Bollocks. Let's pretend Mr Foo is a well adjusted person and accurately judges that Foo jr. is old enough to watch violent films without pissing his pants / becoming a psychopath. That doesn't mean that Mr Bar, a man with a dodgy background suffering from anxiety about his own social inadequacy should be allowed to scare his children to death / turn them into serial killers by giving them violent / scary films to keep them quiet.
It may seem harsh, it may be an infringement of Mr Foo's rights, it may even be an infringement of Mr Bar's rights, but the state has to make an inadequate decision and set a meaningless number and say that once children's age has passed that number they can do this / that.
How about a separate slashdot section for America-only stories like this one*? Far be it for me to deny the citizens of a country a forum in which to moan about their democracy (or impending lack of it), and I realise that /. coverage of other-national stories like the current farce taking place in Australia regarding net-nannying is pretty good, but surely this kind of story is much more for national than international consumption.
:-) ), this story is only really of interest to Americans...
*with, of course the few exceptions posting below to contradict me (
Let me guess - you're American, right? :-)
I normally conveniently filter Jon Katz out, but thought I'd read him again for once. When my eyes once more lit on those trademark sweeping, groundless statements of dubious veracity (such as "the music industry is in near-meltdown over unpaid MP3 downloads and other forms of piracy") I realised once more why it is that several billion impoverished geeks each month commit suicide as a result of reading his articles.
...based on past experience of BBC "theme nights", the "new material" is more likely to be a few sketches that a new episode. Still, the more Monty Python in the world, the better...
Ditto - how about "grammar"? :-)
It's one of the worst written technical papers I've ever seen, and that's saying something.
I thought that the problem with IPv4 was not that we were going to run out of unassigned numbers, but that back when the internet was two calculators and a bit of string, they practically handed out class A address space to any household pet that could verifiably operate a cat-flap, and now can't get it back.
If we've got to change something, then why not go the whole hog and go for IPv6: ready to give an IP address to every nanobot in your entire starship fab...
Hmmm, Lineo - the Open Source biscuit.
Personally, I don't plan to base my opinions about matters computing on the opinions of Iowan judges, excellent people though I'm sure they are. My Casio wristwatch is a more general-purpose device than the ABC was, and yet I don't try to claim it as a "computer".
There's more info about Colossus here, where they make the obvious point that "The question of what is the worlds first computer is less a question of history than a question of definition."
My personal vote goes to the "Manchester Baby", which has an extensive homepage all to itself.
Of course, Babbage can claim not only to have invented the first computer, but also the first printer - they're in the process of building it at the Science Museum in London (UK) right now. No reference to it on their web page, unfortunately.
...are nothing like one another, except at the most basic, functional level. (ie they have a hole in one end, some sort of focussing device and some way of recording what's going on). They both frequently contain big cylindrical bits. That's about it, though.
Easy, I'll just dust off my old jedi mind tricks...