I've taken to having a bootable CD of Knoppix handy in case I need a workable environment when I'm out and about. When asked I just say it's the 'red pill' for your PC: you computer gets to see the real world, even if it's a little rougher.:-)
I think Microsoft has chosen the perfect name...;-)
There are three ways to get wealth: inherit it, marry it, or steal it.
Given that most of the wealthy nations of the world got that way through theft of some kind or another: colonial resources, natural (many would say aboriginal) resources, intellectual property (North America in the 19th century, witness China doing the same today) or labour (slavery or equivalents). I suspect the third world may take note of the precedent in their drive to get out of poverty.
We in the west are a little too comfy, I think, with the idea that our priveleges are entirely a product of our own innocently industrious natures. I think we are in for a painful readjustment. Even now countries like China are gathering the capability to put our currencies in the toilet. I am personally hoping it only takes stolen "intellectual" property to get the third world out of poverty.
The U.S. had a perfectly good functioning (as in, it produced thrust)
nuclear ramjet and abandoned the project (it was tad too hot to actually fly). There were also fission rocket engines built, quite powerful ones that worked by pre-heating the fuel.
Shame those projects got dropped....
Tho' I must admit, given the chance to work on something like that it would be hard to resist...:-)
Let's see them drive that beast through Bruce County Ontario
blizzard...
.... tires rumble left... time to steer right a bit....
.... tires rumble right... time to steer left a bit....
.... honey, can you open the door and tell me how far I am
from the edge of the road....
All political in the end...
on
Pirate Hunter
·
· Score: 1
If you are Dutch, then
Piet
Hein is a national folk hero. If you are Spanish or Portugese
then he was a rapacious Dutch pirate stealing colonial income.
If you're Canadian, then the
Brig
the Sir John Sherbrooke was a warship, if you were American,
a pirate ship. Vice-versa for the Syren.
The time spent on a Master's degree is lost working time, but
is generally recouped by improved pay.
The opportunity cost of a Ph.D. is generally never recouped.
I quit my
job, which was a very good one, and am currently pursuing a Ph.D. but
out of a long-standing love for my subject and because it is a dear
personal goal. I will never earn back what I've lost by not working
a real job during these years. The degree does not pay.
Besides, a Ph.D. is not like other degrees. It induces so much
hatred for your subject area that you have to start with really
loving it to end up feeling positive about it at all when you leave:-)
I'm reminded of
Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson (an OK read...) and
Iain Banks' novels (e.g. Excession) about the Culture.
Both address societies where immortality has become the norm and
have (IMHO) some interesting things to say about them. In Anderson's
world immortal societies tend to sink into idleness as machine
intelligence takes over the interesting stuff and science speeds well
beyond human comprehension. Banks' Culture sees a gradual, more
productive blending
of machine and human mind.
If Sci-Fi really is speculative sociology/anthropology as it is
sometimes
taught in
universities (although that link is to Carleton University, where the "K" stands for "quality") the the SlashDot
crowd should be well versed in the possibilities.
What's not clear to me is whether the sessions are encrypted,
which would seem fairly essential.
I was, BTW, trying to get exactly
this a few months ago. I wanted a USB sound card attached to my
stereo in the living room (I though the SliMP3 was a bit pricy) but
didn't want to put cables or a computer there just for audio. Nobody
seemed to sell the wireless equivalent of a USB hub.
Shame the developer kits are $495.00... I'd be first in line.
It's perhaps an old urban legend that William Shakespear (spelled here without the terminal 'e', both spellings seem to be around) was consulted on the poetry of the Psalms. Presented as evidence:
Note that 4+6 = 10, the number of letters in Shakespear. Count to the 46th word from the beginning, you see "shake" and the 46th word
from the end (excluding the "Selah", a musician notation, IIRC) you
have "spear"...
I'd love to find out if the Bard really did have a hand in it...
which one might hope this book would...
Based on recent research at the University of Waterloo, you may well be able to treat the bandwidth usage as a risk factor and treat the option to buy more bandwidth as exactly that: an option on a real commodity. You would likely be able, then, to price the value of waiting to invest versus the value of investing now with a given expected return. Basically the cost of holding off on investing would then be quantifiable and you could choose the best time for investment.
There has been some good research done on this lately which you
can read up on at the
U. Waterloo Scientific Computation Group which did the
work in co-operation with telecoms and the Finance department. The
math is perhaps a little heavy going, but the results may put you on
a firmer footing than doing the same computation with NPV or similar
methods.
Disclaimer: I'm currently doing research with this group, though not exactly on this topic.
... is to come home to my quiet place in the country, throw
another log on the fire, cook dinner on my gas stove and play
music with my friends who come over later that evening for a jam
session by lantern light... I deal with automation all day at
work, I want my home to be a quiet place...
In addition to the colour changing ink, fine print, security thread (actually not really considered security, it just makes the
note more recognizable in machines) and a watermark of a famous
or important Swiss person, they have
Holographic number in the middle... and down the side, labelled A to H, eight variants of the denomination number
A. Irodin ink (shimmering>
B. Digits in watermark
C. A number that rubs off coloured onto plain paper
D. Superfine outline of the number, or micro-perforations to form the number on higher denominations,
E. Colour changing ink
F. UV Visible ink
G. Metallic numbering
H. Numbering visible only at a sharp angle.
and also Microtext on the note, and
a raised section for the visually impaired.
That is serious forgery security. Then again, judging
by its recent monetary and foreign policy the U.S. is getting a
little tired of a strong currency anyway...
Re:I'd rather...
on
Legacy-Free PCs
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Yes, but with anti-lock, disc brakes, electronically controlled
suspension, and tires that weigh half what their counterparts just
ten years ago did...
We're still using Turing machines, true, but without tapes...
That having been said it's a lot easier to slap RS232 on a device
than it is USB... but that's just a question of time before the
USB chips become as cheap/easy as UART's...
My Data General Nova 2 took some fairly solid abuse as well.
You can throw Timex Sinclairs around a fair bit too.
I chatted with a guy on a flight whose company built printers for M1A1 Abrams tanks. $60K or something ridiculous like that but tough as nails.
Re:Duff's Device: ala 1982 on 6809's
on
Immortal Code
·
· Score: 1
A similar cute trick on a 6809 was to set one of its two stack registers to the source of the copy, one to the destination. Then for the amount to be copied pop all registers from the source, and push to the destination (excepting one register for keeping track). The push/pop was encoded in one instruction, and all the remaining registers would be loaded or stored in one cycle per register. You therefore got about 90% bus usage on the copy.
This was used a lot on Radio Shack Color [sic] Computer games to move or scroll graphic frames in a hurry.
Don't forget they have a very open democratic tradition, and a strong social fabric to back up the technological security. Incurring the severe displeasure of the usually well-informed Swiss police is also not something one risks lightly.
IMHO, Any big voting fraud would require a monumental social engineering hack before you got away with it there.
One year, right after the merger between UBS and SBC, we had to go to the post office to collect an item from the bank. It turned out to be our employee Christmas card... by registered mail... strange... then I opened it up: 30g of gold was in there! Two little bars from the previous two banks, and a 20g bar from the merged bank.
The London employees were pissed off... they got really tacky watches, blue ones for the men, red ones for the ladies...
Oddly right in the middle of the whole Nazi gold thing too... oh well... the Swiss are good folks but political correctness isn't always high on their list... and shown in both cases...
We exclude recent immigrants, the criminally convicted (in the U.S., not in Canada), young people. The Swiss debate was longer than most, agreed, and no, the irony is not lost on me, but if you've lived there a while it becomes at least understandable (if not ideal) why things went that way.
Slashdot Mirror
I've taken to having a bootable CD of Knoppix handy in case I need a workable environment when I'm out and about. When asked I just say it's the 'red pill' for your PC: you computer gets to see the real world, even if it's a little rougher. :-)
I think Microsoft has chosen the perfect name... ;-)
My goodness but that spawned a note or two...
Perhaps a better word would have been "rich" rather than "wealth" or "wealthy". The latter term has become decidedly neutral.
There are three ways to get wealth: inherit it, marry it, or steal it.
Given that most of the wealthy nations of the world got that way through theft of some kind or another: colonial resources, natural (many would say aboriginal) resources, intellectual property (North America in the 19th century, witness China doing the same today) or labour (slavery or equivalents). I suspect the third world may take note of the precedent in their drive to get out of poverty.
We in the west are a little too comfy, I think, with the idea that our priveleges are entirely a product of our own innocently industrious natures. I think we are in for a painful readjustment. Even now countries like China are gathering the capability to put our currencies in the toilet. I am personally hoping it only takes stolen "intellectual" property to get the third world out of poverty.
Next column:
Microsoft shares fall $0.02!Ohhh... nasty... fined ~$0.30 for each person in the EU...
Slap another two zeros on that and you would be talking about a serious fine.
Shame those projects got dropped....
Tho' I must admit, given the chance to work on something like that it would be hard to resist... :-)
The U.S. had a perfectly good functioning nuclear ramjet and abandoned the project. There were also fission rocket engines built, quite powerful ones.
<sarcasm> I wonder why those projects got dropped.. ?</sarcasm>
Tho' I must admit, given the chance to work on something like that it would be hard to resist... :-)
Let's see them drive that beast through Bruce County Ontario blizzard...
If you are Dutch, then Piet Hein is a national folk hero. If you are Spanish or Portugese then he was a rapacious Dutch pirate stealing colonial income.
If you're Canadian, then the Brig the Sir John Sherbrooke was a warship, if you were American, a pirate ship. Vice-versa for the Syren.
As with acts of war anywhere, perspectives can differ even amongst folks supposedly on the same side.
The time spent on a Master's degree is lost working time, but is generally recouped by improved pay.
The opportunity cost of a Ph.D. is generally never recouped. I quit my job, which was a very good one, and am currently pursuing a Ph.D. but out of a long-standing love for my subject and because it is a dear personal goal. I will never earn back what I've lost by not working a real job during these years. The degree does not pay.
Besides, a Ph.D. is not like other degrees. It induces so much hatred for your subject area that you have to start with really loving it to end up feeling positive about it at all when you leave :-)
I'm reminded of Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson (an OK read...) and Iain Banks' novels (e.g. Excession) about the Culture. Both address societies where immortality has become the norm and have (IMHO) some interesting things to say about them. In Anderson's world immortal societies tend to sink into idleness as machine intelligence takes over the interesting stuff and science speeds well beyond human comprehension. Banks' Culture sees a gradual, more productive blending of machine and human mind.
If Sci-Fi really is speculative sociology/anthropology as it is sometimes taught in universities (although that link is to Carleton University, where the "K" stands for "quality") the the SlashDot crowd should be well versed in the possibilities.
Found the answer in the product brief. The chip set supports 128 bit encryption.
Now I really want this... :-)
What's not clear to me is whether the sessions are encrypted, which would seem fairly essential.
I was, BTW, trying to get exactly this a few months ago. I wanted a USB sound card attached to my stereo in the living room (I though the SliMP3 was a bit pricy) but didn't want to put cables or a computer there just for audio. Nobody seemed to sell the wireless equivalent of a USB hub.
Shame the developer kits are $495.00... I'd be first in line.
Of course, there are already published opinions on this one.. :-}
It's perhaps an old urban legend that William Shakespear (spelled here without the terminal 'e', both spellings seem to be around) was consulted on the poetry of the Psalms. Presented as evidence:
KJV Psalm 46Note that 4+6 = 10, the number of letters in Shakespear. Count to the 46th word from the beginning, you see "shake" and the 46th word from the end (excluding the "Selah", a musician notation, IIRC) you have "spear"...
I'd love to find out if the Bard really did have a hand in it... which one might hope this book would...
Based on recent research at the University of Waterloo, you may well be able to treat the bandwidth usage as a risk factor and treat the option to buy more bandwidth as exactly that: an option on a real commodity. You would likely be able, then, to price the value of waiting to invest versus the value of investing now with a given expected return. Basically the cost of holding off on investing would then be quantifiable and you could choose the best time for investment.
There has been some good research done on this lately which you can read up on at the U. Waterloo Scientific Computation Group which did the work in co-operation with telecoms and the Finance department. The math is perhaps a little heavy going, but the results may put you on a firmer footing than doing the same computation with NPV or similar methods.
Disclaimer: I'm currently doing research with this group, though not exactly on this topic.
"No publicity is bad publicity." ... and some folks still don't know it ...
Check out the security features of Swiss money.
Swiss Bank Note Series
In addition to the colour changing ink, fine print, security thread (actually not really considered security, it just makes the note more recognizable in machines) and a watermark of a famous or important Swiss person, they have
That is serious forgery security. Then again, judging by its recent monetary and foreign policy the U.S. is getting a little tired of a strong currency anyway...
Yes, but with anti-lock, disc brakes, electronically controlled suspension, and tires that weigh half what their counterparts just ten years ago did...
We're still using Turing machines, true, but without tapes...
That having been said it's a lot easier to slap RS232 on a device than it is USB... but that's just a question of time before the USB chips become as cheap/easy as UART's...
My Data General Nova 2 took some fairly solid abuse as well.
You can throw Timex Sinclairs around a fair bit too.
I chatted with a guy on a flight whose company built printers for M1A1 Abrams tanks. $60K or something ridiculous like that but tough as nails.
A similar cute trick on a 6809 was to set one of its two stack registers to the source of the copy, one to the destination. Then for the amount to be copied pop all registers from the source, and push to the destination (excepting one register for keeping track). The push/pop was encoded in one instruction, and all the remaining registers would be loaded or stored in one cycle per register. You therefore got about 90% bus usage on the copy.
This was used a lot on Radio Shack Color [sic] Computer games to move or scroll graphic frames in a hurry.
Don't forget they have a very open democratic tradition, and a strong social fabric to back up the technological security. Incurring the severe displeasure of the usually well-informed Swiss police is also not something one risks lightly.
IMHO, Any big voting fraud would require a monumental social engineering hack before you got away with it there.
One year, right after the merger between UBS and SBC, we had to go to the post office to collect an item from the bank. It turned out to be our employee Christmas card... by registered mail... strange... then I opened it up: 30g of gold was in there! Two little bars from the previous two banks, and a 20g bar from the merged bank.
The London employees were pissed off... they got really tacky watches, blue ones for the men, red ones for the ladies...
Oddly right in the middle of the whole Nazi gold thing too... oh well... the Swiss are good folks but political correctness isn't always high on their list... and shown in both cases...
We exclude recent immigrants, the criminally convicted (in the U.S., not in Canada), young people. The Swiss debate was longer than most, agreed, and no, the irony is not lost on me, but if you've lived there a while it becomes at least understandable (if not ideal) why things went that way.