I've always heard from people running Linux on notebooks that power management isn't there, with the result that Windows 2000 gives you much better battery life. Is Crusoe tuned for Linux? Does Linux now have Power Management features? How can they claim increased battery life when switching to Linux?
Linux has had APM for a long time, so the "big" power saving
options (standby mode, battery
monitor etc) are
available and functional.
However, on eg. my Vaio C1,
stuff like screen brightness can
only be controlled by software,
using custom Sony libraries
that are available only for
Windows. This kills battery time: 2+ hours in Windows with
power saving on vs. barely an
hour under Red Hat running
Gnome.
But remember, the above applies
only when the manufacturer uses
custom Windows-only hooks.
The Vaio's BIOS controls work
just fine under both Windows and
Linux, and I presume Casio has
been intelligent enough to
ensure that all power saving -related hardware is fully
accessible under Linux as well.
It's from the April 1980 issue of "Kilobaud
Microcomputing" (love that name), and the
subjects of the interview are
Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, the founders
of the first BBS ever. Interesting musings on
networking ("nationwide netting might become
complicated and expensive"), early modems
("We are running the Potomac Micro-Magic and
are really happy with it"), starting new
BBSs ("you could easily do it for $2000"),
etc. Check it out, and marvel how things have
changed in the last 20 years...
Whose copyright law doesn't even recognize a right of "first sale." For example, it is ILLEGAL in Japan to sell used video tapes, DVDs, and entertainment software.
What!? Within minutes of where I work in Tokyo
there are multistory department buildings
devoted solely to selling used video tapes, DVDs
and entertainment software, I've bought quite
a few myself. There are, however, restrictions
on how recently released used stuff may be
(usually no newer than 1-2 years), which
are usually respected as part of an agreement
between the content production and retail
industries.
Gotta love that front page note though, dated January 30th:
The main site was down for a few hours, as we maxed out our bandwidth for the month. We've transfered over 12GB in the last two weeks! I've worked out a way to make sure that if we max out our bandwidth in the future, we just pay more, instead of the site going down...
Every telecom has delayed or placed on "indertiminate" stutus their 3G roll-outs, even NTT. At this point in spite of all of the billions recently invested in licenses 3G is not going to be seen until at least 2003/2004.
Bzzt -- NTT DoCoMo is still set on rolling
out 3G in the Tokyo metro area on May 2001,
as scheduled earlier. And it recently announced
plans to bring *4G* systems online in 2006...!
Furthermore 2.5 stands to steal much of 3's thunder at a lower cost & with less disruption. Thus it's entirely poosible that 3G will be still-born. Indeed with a number of new LEO space-based technologies being developed it's entirely possble 3G may be completely leapfrogged.
Japan has already had "2.5G" for several
years, in the form of the packet-switched i-mode
network (which is what GPRS essentially attempts
to duplicate). The difference between GPRS and
3G is sheer bandwidth, and I am very much
looking forward to seeing what can be done
with 384 kbps...
There are several new hidden prefs (UI will be added eventually) to turn off various annoying features on web pages:
// Use configurable security policies to override popups, see // http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/component s/configPolicy.html // Turn window.open off for particular sites:
... it's a wearable computer! Ok, so it's a bit larger than most of those, but if the price is really ~ $720 (US), then prepare to be frankenborged. Most of it should be obvious: just find the apropriate data I/O devices, plug them in and place it in an apropriately ventilated bag. Only thing I didn't see was a portable power source (did I just miss it, being just barely awake?) Presumably the device has an internal transformer which takes a little space; open box, remove standard power unit, replace with portable fusion reactor. (What?! didn't get yours?)
Yeah, both the Cappuccino and the Espresso have
been discussed quite a bit on the wear-hard
mailing list. Alas, the problem is indeed the
power consumption: the Cappuccino clocks in at
an entirely unacceptable 54W (peak). For comparison, you can build 300 MHz Pentium
systems that use less than 10W, and some
StrongARM designs are about 1W.
Funny, every time I ask a Japanese person about Turbolinux, I get blank stares. They all use Redhat.
Well, looking around my lab here in Tokyo,
we've got
machines running Red Hat, Slackware, Kondara (a RH spinoff), Omoikane (a Debian spinoff) and quite a few others... but not a single TurboLinux box as far as I know. But they're all specially
tweaked for Japanese support, which most "Western" distros handle really poorly.
On a more global scale, to some extent I think the spread of localized distributions is unfortunate, but it really is crucial to have decent
support for one's language -- remember the Israeli guy complaining about Hebrew under Linux yesterday? I'm still dreaming of a Unicode-based distro that would be able to handle everything under the sun, and KDE has taken a few steps in the right direction lately. Someday, someday...
I believe that in all of human history, there has been only one instance of a new, revolutionary technology being successfully supressed for the good of society (feudal Japan didn't like the idea of farmers with firearms being able take down samurai).
"Successfully"? FYI, the feudal system and
associated bans on weaponry in non-samurai
classes (which had been loosely enforced for
a long time anyway) were abolished after the
Meiji reformation of 1868. Even long before
then the warrior class was using firearms,
and at one point Japanese firearms were in fact
widely considered the best in the world...
I thought that if I were a *true* geek, I'd be able to tell where the 10.X.X.X IP addresses used in the movie actually corresponded to. (Hint, not a satellite). I can't recall if they're a class-A private subnet or not -- I only use the class-B private subnets.
Think of it like a 555-xxxx phone number in a movie. Don't want people pinging an IP to death.
Huh? 10.X.X.X are very real addresses, I'm
sitting next to 10.0.0.1 (www.sanpo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp) here at the U. of
Tokyo as I type...
Pilot astronaut applicants must also meet the following requirements prior to submitting an application:
Yes, pilot astronauts, as in the
guys who actually fly the Space Shuttle.
The requirements for "mission specialists"
(which is what our lucky gameshow winner
would become) are much lower. After all,
they let John Glenn fly again...
It is fugu, a blow fish, that has the deadly nerve toxin in one of the internal organs (either the liver of gall bladder, I forget which).
Liver, gonads, intestines and skin. (You could have read the provided FDA link, you know.)
There are fugu restaurants in
Japan, where the thrill of risking death by eating even a slightly tainted sliver of meat is the whole point of the experience.
Yup. In fact, the more expensive the fugu part, the closer
it is to the poisonous organs (and the greater the
risk of dying!). Connoisseurs say you actually get
a buzz from fugu with a tiny bit of poison in it...
You must be a licensed fugu chef to work at such a restaurant, but there are a number of "black market" fugu stands around, too.
This, on the other hand, is bunk. Any restaurant that
tries to sell fugu without a licence would instantly
get slammed by Japan's Health Ministry, as would any
"stall" that tried to sell any type of raw fish.
However, you're
free to go fish your own fugu and serve it up to your
family, and this is in fact the reason behind most of
Japan's fugu deaths.
Michael T. Itamura refers the interested reader to the August 1984 issue of National Geographic. Stories and photographs of the leopard puffer. (Even a story
about a famed Kabuki actor who ate the liver of the puffer and paid for it with his life).
Matsugoro Bando... XIV? Can't remember. Anyway, he
wasn't quite stupid enough to eat an actual poison organ,
but he did bribe a chef to give him a piece usually
deemed inedible due to its proximity.
Incidentally, I'll be going to eat a fugu dinner next week...
For the first generation of true wearables, I'd be
happy just to see a good-looking, extrememly light product that did extremely crisp text display and maybe primitive vector graphics.
Teehee... so would we all, but the technology just does
not exist yet. Wearable HMDs are either bulky, expensive or low-resolution -- pick any two.
MicroOptical's
stuff is the best on the market right now, but you'll
still looking at $5000+ for those 320x200 eyeglasses on the
front page. Limited betas of their new
640x480 display (woohoo!) will be available to qualified
OEMs starting next year... but at least you won't
look like a freak with one, you'll just look like a nerd.
And I fail to see why a scientist (who's ideas i am supposed to find credible) refuses to admit that the most probable explanation for his findings is CONTAMINATION!
No matter how incredibly stringent your reqirements for having sterile sampling equipment are, it must be noted that the expirament was carried out ON EARTH.
Sure, and I'd think so too if he was claiming to have found
penicillin from outer space... but the scientist claims to have found an entirely
new species of bacteria, unlike any previously known.
The odds of getting your sample contaminated with a
previously unknown species are pretty low -- but still probably higher than finding alien bacteria.
It's still a bit too early to say anything for sure,
but assuming that an independent team verifies that these critters are
indeed unique in some way, then I'd wager on there being
bacteria in the upper layers of the atmosphere. If it
turns out the bacteria have evolved to be able to live
high up in the atmosphere permanently, it would also mean
that odds are they didn't just come off a comet...
Interesting that they choose to name by drawing tribute to Isaac Asimov.
Maybe not. "Ashi mo" (which can also be romanized Asimo)
means "Legs too!" in Japanese.
Cheers,
-j.
Re:Sorry, but at 244 grams your phone is a toaster
on
New All-In-One Nokia
·
· Score: 2
There were many other lighter models available in the shop, but they were too small for comfort IMHO - I would be frightened of losing them. I guess these weigh around
100 grams.
And here in Japan, the average phone is less than 70g.
(My Nokia NM502i is a whopping 77g -- a bit of a clunker
compared to most others.) I carry it in a little pouch
attached to my belt, but after years of using heavy GSM
phones I still keep checking whether it's really there,
because I can't feel the weight at all...
Oh, the NM502i has wireless internet access, like almost
all models in the Japanese market. Unlike most others,
it doesn't have a flip-top color screen and a JVM
built in...
Cheers,
-j.
Re:Uh, u mean like breasts? Re:How it works
on
Keyless Keyboard
·
· Score: 2
The difference is that an internal network
is just that: an internal network. Assuming
the bank's network designers had a modicum
of intelligence, the (important parts)
of the internal network have no connections
whatsoever into the outside world (read:
terminals not secured by the bank's
physical security), which means
they are literally uncrackable -- from the
outside. Inside jobs are a different matter,
and and I would not be too surprised to
find that at some places internal
security consists mostly of obscurity.
And of course there are tales about
evil Russian hackers splicing into
the banks' private cables and whatnot...
there's probably a grain of truth in them,
but for most part we'll never know since
banks have a very large interest in
keeping things hush-hush.
Internet banking is very different. When you
have a bank on the Internet, you must allow
people anywhere on the Internet to
manipulate those critical internals, and the system
must be very, very carefully designed to
allow only authenticated people to manipulate
only their accounts. This is highly
non-trivial, and it's only a matter of time
before somebody manages to exploit a flaw.
Whether we will ever hear about it is another
story.
Either way, there's good coverage on Yahoo, as always.
Err... yeah. How's this for good coverage?
A worm is a distinct type of computer virus that makes copies of itself across multiple
systems. This particular virus is believed to have entered Microsoft's headquarters on the
back of an inconspicuous looking document, which would also make it a so-called Trojan
virus.
I don't think I've ever seen so many concepts
incorrectly defined in such a short space
before:
Son, do you honestly believe that the ENTIRE populace of Finland is without checks? I don't even understand your statement. Do you feel powerful when making these
false statements? Do you feel superior, somehow?
I've lived in Finland for most of my life,
and during that time I have received exactly
one (1) check: a gift from my
grandparents. Writing a check is expensive,
getting a check cashed is expensive, why
on earth bother when electronic transfer is
free and much less cumbersome? Just type in
a few numbers, either on your home computer
or an ATM, and press OK -- that's all
there is to it.
(Of course, here in Japan I can do an
electronic transfer by punching those
few numbers into my mobile , but that's
a different story...)
Top 75 list here. Duracell is 41st but Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Harley-Davidson are not on the list, surprised?
Mercedes is #12. Ferraris and Harleys are unlikely to mean much in the non-industrialized world, whereas every dictator worth his corruption and kickbacks is driven around in a large black Mercedes...
I don't disagree with most of the rest of your post, but...
The US, despite our vaunted claims to freedom, is being systematically dissected and legislated into a religious police state. The same thing happened in Iran 20-30 years ago, and it's happening here too.
Iran had the shah's corrupt regime violently overthrown and Islamic law instituted overnight by the leaders of the revolution. Unless the framers of COPA are planning a coup d'état I find it rather difficult to draw any parallels here...
These CorelDraw-vs-GIMP comparisons are starting to annoy me. Repeat after me:
CorelDraw is a vector drawing program.
The Gimp is a bitmap drawing program.
The Gimp cannot edit vector graphics; CorelDraw cannot edit bitmap graphics. The two products simply do not compete.
The Gimp's real competition is Corel's Photo-Paint, which, interestingly enough, will be available for free once released, or at least so says the article. Evidently Corel feels that the Gimp is good enough a free competitor to make selling Photo-Paint alone useless! However, while CorelDraw is definitely the king of vector drawing programs and one of the missing key apps still holding back Linux (no, xfig really does not cut it!), Photo-Paint is far less popular than Adobe's PhotoShop. PhotoShop is one of the few reasons I still boot into WinNT, and I don't see this changing unless Adobe ports a recent version or Gimp 2.0 makes good on its claims.
"Department Of Defense Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria" ("Orange Book"), 12/85 I knew the Orange book was online... if I ever find the others I'll let you know.
There are many Color X Books out there, the original poster was referring to the particular Orange Book that defines (one of) the standards for CD(-ROM?) encoding.
Slashdot Mirror
Linux has had APM for a long time, so the "big" power saving options (standby mode, battery monitor etc) are available and functional. However, on eg. my Vaio C1, stuff like screen brightness can only be controlled by software, using custom Sony libraries that are available only for Windows. This kills battery time: 2+ hours in Windows with power saving on vs. barely an hour under Red Hat running Gnome.
But remember, the above applies only when the manufacturer uses custom Windows-only hooks. The Vaio's BIOS controls work just fine under both Windows and Linux, and I presume Casio has been intelligent enough to ensure that all power saving -related hardware is fully accessible under Linux as well.
Cheers,
-j.
http://www.jps.net/foxnhare/cbbs.html
It's from the April 1980 issue of "Kilobaud Microcomputing" (love that name), and the subjects of the interview are Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, the founders of the first BBS ever. Interesting musings on networking ("nationwide netting might become complicated and expensive"), early modems ("We are running the Potomac Micro-Magic and are really happy with it"), starting new BBSs ("you could easily do it for $2000"), etc. Check it out, and marvel how things have changed in the last 20 years...
Cheers,
-j.
What!? Within minutes of where I work in Tokyo there are multistory department buildings devoted solely to selling used video tapes, DVDs and entertainment software, I've bought quite a few myself. There are, however, restrictions on how recently released used stuff may be (usually no newer than 1-2 years), which are usually respected as part of an agreement between the content production and retail industries.
Cheers,
-j.
- http://history.eis.net.au/
(Australia)
- http://apple-history.macstuff.co.nz/
(New Zealand)
- http://www.platinium.fr/apple
(France, translated)
- http://www.theyopy.de/applehistory/
(Germany)
- Thttp://www.tevac.com/applehistoryitalia/
(Italy, translated)
- http://www.apple-history.nl
(Netherlands)
- http://applehistory.acmug.com
(Norway)
Gotta love that front page note though, dated January 30th:The main site was down for a few hours, as we maxed out our bandwidth for the month. We've transfered over 12GB in the last two weeks! I've worked out a way to make sure that if we max out our bandwidth in the future, we just pay more, instead of the site going down...
Baaaaaaaad move...
Cheers,
-j.
Bzzt -- NTT DoCoMo is still set on rolling out 3G in the Tokyo metro area on May 2001, as scheduled earlier. And it recently announced plans to bring *4G* systems online in 2006...!
Furthermore 2.5 stands to steal much of 3's thunder at a lower cost & with less disruption. Thus it's entirely poosible that 3G will be still-born. Indeed with a number of new LEO space-based technologies being developed it's entirely possble 3G may be completely leapfrogged.
Japan has already had "2.5G" for several years, in the form of the packet-switched i-mode network (which is what GPRS essentially attempts to duplicate). The difference between GPRS and 3G is sheer bandwidth, and I am very much looking forward to seeing what can be done with 384 kbps...
Cheers,
-j.
Well, then it's time to switch to Moz. Quoting the 0.8 release notes:
There are several new hidden prefs (UI will be added eventually) to turn off various annoying features on web pages:
user_pref("capability.policy.popupsites.sites", "http://www.annoyingsite1.com http://www.popupsite2.com");e rnal.open","noAccess");
user_pref("capability.policy.popupsites.windowint
user_pref("capability.policy.default.windowintern
user_pref("browser.target_new_blocked", true);
Cheers,
-j.
Yeah, both the Cappuccino and the Espresso have been discussed quite a bit on the wear-hard mailing list. Alas, the problem is indeed the power consumption: the Cappuccino clocks in at an entirely unacceptable 54W (peak). For comparison, you can build 300 MHz Pentium systems that use less than 10W, and some StrongARM designs are about 1W.
Cheers,
-j.
Well, looking around my lab here in Tokyo, we've got machines running Red Hat, Slackware, Kondara (a RH spinoff), Omoikane (a Debian spinoff) and quite a few others... but not a single TurboLinux box as far as I know. But they're all specially tweaked for Japanese support, which most "Western" distros handle really poorly.
On a more global scale, to some extent I think the spread of localized distributions is unfortunate, but it really is crucial to have decent support for one's language -- remember the Israeli guy complaining about Hebrew under Linux yesterday? I'm still dreaming of a Unicode-based distro that would be able to handle everything under the sun, and KDE has taken a few steps in the right direction lately. Someday, someday...
Cheers,
-j.
"Successfully"? FYI, the feudal system and associated bans on weaponry in non-samurai classes (which had been loosely enforced for a long time anyway) were abolished after the Meiji reformation of 1868. Even long before then the warrior class was using firearms, and at one point Japanese firearms were in fact widely considered the best in the world...
Cheers,
-j.
Think of it like a 555-xxxx phone number in a movie. Don't want people pinging an IP to death.
Huh? 10.X.X.X are very real addresses, I'm sitting next to 10.0.0.1 (www.sanpo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp) here at the U. of Tokyo as I type...
Cheers,
-j.
Yes, pilot astronauts, as in the guys who actually fly the Space Shuttle. The requirements for "mission specialists" (which is what our lucky gameshow winner would become) are much lower. After all, they let John Glenn fly again...
Cheers,
-j.
Liver, gonads, intestines and skin. (You could have read the provided FDA link, you know.)
There are fugu restaurants in Japan, where the thrill of risking death by eating even a slightly tainted sliver of meat is the whole point of the experience.
Yup. In fact, the more expensive the fugu part, the closer it is to the poisonous organs (and the greater the risk of dying!). Connoisseurs say you actually get a buzz from fugu with a tiny bit of poison in it...
You must be a licensed fugu chef to work at such a restaurant, but there are a number of "black market" fugu stands around, too.
This, on the other hand, is bunk. Any restaurant that tries to sell fugu without a licence would instantly get slammed by Japan's Health Ministry, as would any "stall" that tried to sell any type of raw fish. However, you're free to go fish your own fugu and serve it up to your family, and this is in fact the reason behind most of Japan's fugu deaths.
Michael T. Itamura refers the interested reader to the August 1984 issue of National Geographic. Stories and photographs of the leopard puffer. (Even a story about a famed Kabuki actor who ate the liver of the puffer and paid for it with his life).
Matsugoro Bando... XIV? Can't remember. Anyway, he wasn't quite stupid enough to eat an actual poison organ, but he did bribe a chef to give him a piece usually deemed inedible due to its proximity.
Incidentally, I'll be going to eat a fugu dinner next week...
Cheers,
-j.
Teehee... so would we all, but the technology just does not exist yet. Wearable HMDs are either bulky, expensive or low-resolution -- pick any two. MicroOptical's stuff is the best on the market right now, but you'll still looking at $5000+ for those 320x200 eyeglasses on the front page. Limited betas of their new 640x480 display (woohoo!) will be available to qualified OEMs starting next year... but at least you won't look like a freak with one, you'll just look like a nerd.
Cheers,
-j.
Sure, and I'd think so too if he was claiming to have found penicillin from outer space... but the scientist claims to have found an entirely new species of bacteria, unlike any previously known. The odds of getting your sample contaminated with a previously unknown species are pretty low -- but still probably higher than finding alien bacteria.
It's still a bit too early to say anything for sure, but assuming that an independent team verifies that these critters are indeed unique in some way, then I'd wager on there being bacteria in the upper layers of the atmosphere. If it turns out the bacteria have evolved to be able to live high up in the atmosphere permanently, it would also mean that odds are they didn't just come off a comet...
Cheers,
-j.
For lack of sex, sleep, caffeine and Mexican food? No thanks, I'll join the control group instead...
Cheers,
-j.
Maybe not. "Ashi mo" (which can also be romanized Asimo) means "Legs too!" in Japanese.
Cheers,
-j.
And here in Japan, the average phone is less than 70g. (My Nokia NM502i is a whopping 77g -- a bit of a clunker compared to most others.) I carry it in a little pouch attached to my belt, but after years of using heavy GSM phones I still keep checking whether it's really there, because I can't feel the weight at all...
Oh, the NM502i has wireless internet access, like almost all models in the Japanese market. Unlike most others, it doesn't have a flip-top color screen and a JVM built in...
Cheers,
-j.
http://cbc.ca/gfx/photos/keyboard_ergonom001108.jp g
The thing looks more like two giant selector dials connected together.
Cheers,
-j.
Internet banking is very different. When you have a bank on the Internet, you must allow people anywhere on the Internet to manipulate those critical internals, and the system must be very, very carefully designed to allow only authenticated people to manipulate only their accounts. This is highly non-trivial, and it's only a matter of time before somebody manages to exploit a flaw. Whether we will ever hear about it is another story.
Cheers,
-j.
Err... yeah. How's this for good coverage?
A worm is a distinct type of computer virus that makes copies of itself across multiple systems. This particular virus is believed to have entered Microsoft's headquarters on the back of an inconspicuous looking document, which would also make it a so-called Trojan virus.
I don't think I've ever seen so many concepts incorrectly defined in such a short space before:
- All viruses (and worms) replicate
- Worms are not viruses
- Trojans are executables, not documents
- Trojans are not viruses
- Trojans are not worms
- Trojans don't replicate
Cheers,-j.
I've lived in Finland for most of my life, and during that time I have received exactly one (1) check: a gift from my grandparents. Writing a check is expensive, getting a check cashed is expensive, why on earth bother when electronic transfer is free and much less cumbersome? Just type in a few numbers, either on your home computer or an ATM, and press OK -- that's all there is to it.
(Of course, here in Japan I can do an electronic transfer by punching those few numbers into my mobile , but that's a different story...)
Cheers,
-j.
Mercedes is #12. Ferraris and Harleys are unlikely to mean much in the non-industrialized world, whereas every dictator worth his corruption and kickbacks is driven around in a large black Mercedes...
Cheers,
-j.
The US, despite our vaunted claims to freedom, is being systematically dissected and legislated into a religious police state. The same thing happened in Iran 20-30 years ago, and it's happening here too.
Iran had the shah's corrupt regime violently overthrown and Islamic law instituted overnight by the leaders of the revolution. Unless the framers of COPA are planning a coup d'état I find it rather difficult to draw any parallels here...
Cheers,
-j.
CorelDraw is a vector drawing program.
The Gimp is a bitmap drawing program.
The Gimp cannot edit vector graphics; CorelDraw cannot edit bitmap graphics. The two products simply do not compete.
The Gimp's real competition is Corel's Photo-Paint, which, interestingly enough, will be available for free once released, or at least so says the article. Evidently Corel feels that the Gimp is good enough a free competitor to make selling Photo-Paint alone useless! However, while CorelDraw is definitely the king of vector drawing programs and one of the missing key apps still holding back Linux (no, xfig really does not cut it!), Photo-Paint is far less popular than Adobe's PhotoShop. PhotoShop is one of the few reasons I still boot into WinNT, and I don't see this changing unless Adobe ports a recent version or Gimp 2.0 makes good on its claims.
Cheers,
-j.
There are many Color X Books out there, the original poster was referring to the particular Orange Book that defines (one of) the standards for CD(-ROM?) encoding.
Cheers,
-j.