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It looks a lot like the past

Speaking to their durability, a family friend gave his childhood Astroscan to our son for his fifth birthday. Our son is an adult now, and we still enjoy using it at home and on trips.

Dan Rutter has a nice Astroscan review that includes some other telescope suggestions:

http://www.dansdata.com/astros...

-Dangle

Sounds like the offspring of an old urban legend involving images stolen from Daniel Rutter's review of an actual keyboard logger.

http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/dellbug.asp
http://www.dansdata.com/keyghost.htm

http://www.dansdata.com/gz105.htm

The capacity of MicroSD cards has improved a bit since then, resulting in a moderate increase in achievable bandwidth; but other than that the analysis is still essentially the same.

...post on Dan's Data already?
He covered most options available for what you want back in 2009, and apparently he did an update in 2011.

http://www.dansdata.com/gz094.htm

Even that's not true. Most Ni-Cd cells exhibit little to no memory effect, and those that do only show it under very controlled charging conditions. Any charger that overcharges Ni-Cd cells (pretty much all of them) will eliminate the memory effect, even in the few cells where it can occur at all. A full discharge is not required, and can be harmful to multi-cell packs.

Voltage depression is frequently confused with the memory effect. It doesn't change the actual amount of charge stored, only the voltage at which that charge is released. It can be reversed by a full discharge, but with the same risks to multi-cell batteries. It's mostly harmless, and generally just confuses built-in battery meters.

For more details see Dan's Quick Guide to Memory Effect, or Wikipedia if you prefer.

And incidentally (I know you didn't claim this, but it's a relevant point anyway), for Li-ion, a "charge cycle" is measured as a series of charges equalling the full capacity of the cell. It doesn't matter much whether that's one full charge, or five 20% charges. If anything, it'll probably last longer with the 20% ones. Fully discharging your laptop battery won't make it last longer - if anything, it'll kill it faster.

Anything that will play nice with a kinect, or its older-and-less-sophisticated-but-much-more-mature-at-emulating-a-mouse sibling the IR webcam with illuminators and a retroreflective dot(because the commercial units have been touched by the dead hand of 'assistive technology' pricing they are damned expensive for what they are, DIY hacks are less likely to be polished; but can come in at a factor of ten less) could be useful to provide an extra 'hand' worth of control without occupying your good hand(if you are a flight simmer, you may well want one anyway: for immersion, nothing beats having your cockpit view actually change when you turn your real-world head...)

Other useful things: the switch discussed here(or its reasonably numerous clones) is basically a cheapy guitar stomp pedal that can be programmed to perform more or less any keystroke, or short keystroke sequence(and possibly a mouse click event, not sure) that a normal USB HID device could. I think that 4-pedal versions are also available. For relatively little money, a chunk of plywood or something, and a USB hub, you should be able to get your feet in on controlling a bunch of useful hotkeys and whatnot.

For more thoroughly custom work, the teensy is extremely convenient. It is essentially arduino compatible, so basic development is dead simple; but it also includes a USB HID bootloader out of the box and enough I/O pins to tack on a reasonable number of switches that can then be tied to keycodes sent to the host(I could imagine, for instance, that if you don't have the finger control for WASD, you might still be able to handle a joystick/grip type arrangement with 4 contact switches mapped to those allowing you to control standard left-hand functions with only gross motor control of the arm/shoulder and possibly one or two of the footswitches for crouch/reload/whatever.

Also good to know about for custom ergonomics work: Polycaprolactone. At room temperature, it is a plastic with bulk properties pretty similar to nylon. However, it becomes soft enough to be moldable at only 60 degrees C or so. This makes it only slightly uncomfortable to hand-mould grips and things that precisely fit you. It can also be tool worked when hardened with a minimum of trouble.

Reminds me of an old Dan's Data http://www.dansdata.com/gz039.htm. At some point he discusses ferroresonant power conditioners. Presumably one can get a whole house version. Warning: I am operating from memory, I didn't actually read the article again.

Assuming you've got the "normal" selection of tools in your place, just disassemble the drives and use a coarse grit sandpaper on the magnetic surfaces. About 60 seconds of elbow grease on each side should be enough. If extra paranoid, rinse the platters, and if you can still see yourself, do it again. A clamp and power sander would be a neat extra.

As many posters have said, save the actuator magnets. The older the drive, the bigger the magnet. They are more powerful than anything you'll find at a hardware store, enough to draw blood if a couple pinch a fingertip. Neodymium iron boron magnets are brittle, so I'd suggest leaving them on their steel backplates (see here for details).

http://www.dansdata.com/ifeel.htm

I had one of these circa 2002.

Although they don't come in very large sizes (if you can even find them anymore) a CRT HD TV has, by leaps and bounds, a better picture than any other HDTV technology.

Except that no CRT television can fully reproduce a 1080p signal. They don't have the resolution of a CRT computer monitor, because they are designed to be brighter and have a larger dot pitch.

http://www.dansdata.com/gz029.htm

Ah the forever shifting goalposts of AI.
http://www.dansdata.com/gz107.htm

""A machine will never be able to read the written word."
"A machine will never understand speech."
"A machine will never be able to look at something and figure out what 3D shape it is."
"A machine will never drive a car."
"A machine will never play chess."
"A machine will never play chess well."
"A machine will never beat a chess Grandmaster."
"A machine will never beat my favourite chess Grandmaster."

Go back far enough and you can find people making these same sorts of predictions about tasks that seem simple today. Arithmetic, algebra, spell-checking - all were clearly Things Only the Mind of Man (and of a Few Unusually Intelligent Women, Bless 'Em) Could Ever Do."

"But a funny thing always happens, right after a machine does whatever it is that people previously declared a machine would never do. What happens is, that particular act is demoted from the rarefied world of "artificial intelligence", to mere "automation" or "software engineering".

Apparently, you see, when they said "a machine will never be able to spot-weld a car together", they meant to say "a machine will never be aware that it's welding a car together". So all of those production-line robots aren't actually a triumph of artificial intelligence at all, any more than aircraft autopilots or optical character recognition or the square-root button on a calculator - which, after all, merely duplicated a perfectly obvious slide-rule operation - are.

But don't worry. Once someone comes up with a computer that can carry on an intelligent IM chat with you, that'll be proper AI. (And a machine will never do it, of course!)"

Now of course we can cross off "A machine will never be able to beat the champion at jeopardy"
but of course that's trivial really.... and look at the mistakes it made while beating one of the best human players. obviously since it made odd mistakes it isn't really a triumph of AI.

I read (most of) the TFA, and it seems the only place the iPad is mentioned is in the last five or so lines at the end of the fourth page (of a total of four). The man says it's "very possible" they'll adopt a popular device like the iPad over another tablet or old PDA. Period. Based on this ridiculously small amount of information about it, the iPad shouldn't even be mentioned in the summary. But it is, because that makes people read the article.

Y'know, I'm tired of all the blowjobs Steve Jobs is getting from the press the world over. I can't count the times I've seen ads for iPads thinly disguised as meaningful articles on magazines and newspapers that normally have nothing to do with the field of portable computing. The most shameless go with "how the iPad has changed our life" ("our" whose? Because last I checked, an iPad wasn't a requirement for every household like, say, a vacuum cleaner is). The ones that retain *some* level of self-respect have the decency to say "how tablet computers have changed our life", but then invariably have a picture of an iPad under that title.

And I'm no anti-fanboy, mind you. I dislike the iPad for a variety of reasons I won't discuss here, but I'd be making the same remarks if the press had gone all apeshit about the latest Android tablet, or something.

As for the topic of technology on space stations, I found this an interesting read, and rather more informative as well - though it's more about the computers running the stations than the ones used by the staff for their own enjoyment. It's surprising just how old the stuff going up in space really is.

The trouble for AOL is that, while those websites are popular, they are(at best) a tiny profitable segment that could never support the mothership.

Beyond the fact that many websites don't actually run a profit, the ones that do often do because you can trivially run them with fairly low overhead. No big corporate HQ, with lightbulbs and janitors and suits, no fancy press room, just some anonymous httpd processes running at CDNs-R-US and some stringers banging away at their laptops at home. If you are lucky, with a dash of good, such a model will pay the stringers, and the hosting bills, and maybe have something left over; but it is vanishingly unlikely that there will be enough on top to support a bloated managerial empire.

AOL, in its heyday(or, actually a bit after its heyday, which is why brokering the merger was so brilliant on the AOL side) was considered Big and Serious enough to merge with Time Warner, a company with actual revenue and actual hope. There is no way a behemoth of that size is going to be supported by Engadget and the like.

Dan's article is worth a read.

This link does a good job explaining the continuing mem effect urban legend. http://www.dansdata.com/gz011.htm

You realize the computer you typed that message on was built using parts originally designed for the manned space program, right?

You may be overreaching. Dan thinks that manned space flight does not demand cutting edge hardware.

http://www.dansdata.com/spacecomp.htm

He's not the first to suggest something like that.

It's pretty fun to yank the plug out on your web server and see everything continue to tick along. "

Or an ordinary, every day run of the mill 'off the shelf' plain jane beige UPS. or a Ghetto one, if you'd like.

Still its pretty cool, just wondering how much overhead there is by setting up this system

I know this is beside the joke, but mice with force feedback did exist back in 2001. Logitech iFeel.

  -AC

dansdata http://www.dansdata.com/goop.htm water does well as well. anyways, it seems dubious to say the least.

The real mystery is how Logitech iFeel didn't make it. I got that thing right here but it has no support to OS X.

It is immersion powered which can do little vibrates which everyone goes crazy about these days. "Haptic feedback" is the term I guess.

While I was on Windows, it was a real intutive thing which caused no kind of system instability. I would say "because of software", no it is not the case. Unreal (2?) made use of it and it was the only game I could experience real feedback.

Here is its review from 2001
http://www.dansdata.com/ifeel.htm

BTW, hope current Logitech owners don't go mad at me... I just plugged it to my Mac and it works. 8 years :)

There are clear shenanigans in play, that or (more likely) methodological errors.

The type of paste you use has very little difference. Let's not forget this comparison which includes toothpaste.

I'm no battery scientist, but I wonder if these batteries will be more or less safe compared to the lithium-ion batteries

if the energy density is higher, that normally means "less safe".

interesting, nearly-relevant article

The Internet is all about price. As you point out, quality is meaningless. If it isn't free, it is going to garner only a fraction of the interest.

I disagree. I think both iTunes and the experiences of Radiohead and Trent Reznor disprove this statement.

I think this article sums it up reasonably well: "The Great Apathetic Revolution". In summary, people will do whatever is easiest as long as it isn't absolutely insanely expensive. iTunes makes it easy to pay $0.99/track, so people do that. It's easier than finding what they want on the torrent sites. It's also easier than finding and buying the album that has the song they want, which is why Sony gets so jihaddy at them.

Today we have "clever hackers" getting their content for free and "noobs" paying the fare for everyone.

This is true. It isn't fair, but it's less unfair than it used to be: It's easier for a poor person to become clever than to become rich. The Digital Divide is self-imposed to a larger degree than previous divides have been.

Found it.
I was remembering a dongle, but this seems to fit functionality. Does CoH run on Win98?

http://www.dansdata.com/easyclone.htm

Dan of Dan's Data recently posted an interesting essay on this topic.

Yeah but I hear black computers are faster.

Actually /PAE does nothing in Windows XP, primarily to avoid issues with drivers that don't support PAE, as you need special PAE-aware drivers for all devices in your system.

I can vouch for the dangers of too much caffeine.

I accidentally started drinking a lot more caffeine than usual, and after a while, I started having worse and worse tremors. My hands would shake. The day I went to see my doctor about it, I had to concentrate furiously to get my hand steady enough to sign my signature at the front desk.

We didn't know what was going on. I was certain it wasn't the coffee I was drinking, because coffee had never been a problem for me before. My doctor gave me some tests, and told me he was sure it wasn't anything scary (Parkinson's disease or something). He recommended I start taking magnesium supplements.

I took the magnesium and it helped right away! Then over time the tremors started to get worse again. I was starting to get scared.

My doctor sent me to a neurologist. I decided to cut out all coffee for a week or so before visiting the neurologist; I was still certain coffee wasn't the cause of my problems, but I figured it would be helpful to remove one variable from the equation. After being tested in various ways while hooked up to cool machines, I was ruled not to have anything scary. More importantly, after a week with no coffee, I was starting to feel a lot better.

So I decided to stay off the coffee. I had some bad withdrawal symptoms (headache, etc.) and took a lot of aspirin and ibuprofen. (And around this time I started to get bad tinnitus on top of everything else!)

Now I am mostly off caffeine. I sometimes have a single cup of caffeinated coffee. The tremors have passed and I'm grateful that my symptoms are gone. (The tinnitus stopped when I stopped taking the aspirin and ibuprofen.)

An important thing I want to tell you: I never drank a cup of coffee and then immediately had my hands start shaking. I had a gradual onset of hand tremors and it was chronic, with no obvious increase right after I drank coffee. This convinced me the tremors could not be caused by the coffee, but now I am convinced that they were.

You may be wondering how I could accidentally start overdosing on caffeine. Well, I started working in a building where the coffee was awful (Farmer Brothers commercial coffee service), so I started making my own coffee using an Aeropress. This is an excellent coffee maker (Dan likes it!), and I still use it and recommend it. But when I first got it, I was using caffeinated coffee, and I was trying to make "doppio ristretto" portions for myself, so I was using two scoops of finely ground espresso beans. I now believe that one AeroPress scoop of coffee makes a double shot, so I was effectively drinking four espresso shots worth of caffeine; and I usually drank two of these per day. So while I thought I was drinking 4 espresso shots worth of caffeine, I suspect I was drinking 8 shots worth, possibly even a little more.

As the saying goes, the dose makes the poison. I drank reasonable portions of caffeine for years and didn't notice any ill effects at all; it was only when I drank too much that I had the scary tremors.

If you get hand tremors, I do suggest you cut out all caffeine for a while and see if it helps.

steveha

How about "Best Ergonomic Keyboard" for those who write a lot and don't want Carpal Tunnel Syndrome? Alas, in all the years in front of the monitor, I have found only one keyboard that was worthy of the title "Ergonomic". It was Acer Future Keyboard. It was not only split, it was sloped down forward, so your hands maintained level position while you typed. It also had light-touch keys that collapsed easily and positively, unlike the awful, springy, rubbery keys on many of the today's keyboards. That keyboard was sold in the late 199x through early 2000s. I've managed to preserve two of them. I clean them regularly and will use them for as long as I can. Unfortunately, they only have PS/2 connectors, not USB. I tried various shims in the past, store-bought and home-cooked, all to no avail. These keyboards are so important to me, that I have literally forgone buying a Macintosh until I can get a comparable keyboard because I could not make mine work with the one I tested at an Apple Store.

The 3.5/4GB issue is inherent with 32-bit systems that use memory-mapped I/O. A portion of the address space is allocated for your I/O devices, including your sound card, video card, etc. That portion of the address space is no longer available to be used to access physical RAM. Typically, the video card is the biggest culprit--if it has 512MB of on-board RAM, that's 512MB of the 4GB address space that the system can't use to access physical RAM.

The always-entertaining Daniel Rutter has a good explanation.

Perhaps they should rename it "Project Assfuck" - after all, that's what it's doing to the consumer.

The initiative is similar to security tags used in clothing retail that spill ink on garments if they're forcibly removed, thereby destroying the item.

Uhm... those tags come off if you get a rare earth magnet (say, from an old hard drive or something) anywhere near them.

Not that we're supposed to know how things work... after all, knowledge is evil, the almighty corporations want us to be dumb and stupid and drink Brawndo.

Seriously, now. This will not only be cracked damn quick, but it'll fail the first time someone has a non-'net-connected home box (dvd player, console, etc) and they'll get up in arms about it. Plus, it's already been tried once, remember Circuit City and Divx?

Eek, slight correction, power loss is a function of resistance and current. Whether it's AC or DC has nothing to do with it. In fact extremely high voltage transmission lines use DC in Japan.

We use AC because it's much cheaper to step it up to a very high voltage to lower the current (thereby lowering Pl), and then step it back down again once we're at our destination.
Power Loss = I^2R

I'm sceptical about the "memory effect" claim, but I don't know enough about batteries to claim you're wrong. I'll just leave you with a link to a guy I trust more than random /. commenters. http://www.dansdata.com/gz011.htm

It appears that I may be full of shit, my apologies. I asked Dan:

There've been trial projects using superconducting cables to shift large amounts of power for some years now (I mentioned them in passing in http://www.dansdata.com/gz026.htm ), but I don't think there are any large-scale applications yet. If the cable loses its cool the results are, of course, very bad.

But if you want to connect a brand new zillion-megawatt nuke plant to a city not that far away over geologically stable ground, I think buried superconductors could easily work out cheaper than umpteen giant pylons holding up a vast tonnage of aluminium cables.

Cat Review and Comparison for Geeks

I have to agree - this doesn't inspire confidence in me.

I'd much rather see samples sent off to independent testing labs. Heck, I'm sure there's some mechanical equivalents to Dan out there.

Heck, Popular Mechanics and consumer reports will occasionally provide free testing of various 'too good to be true' methods and devices.

His idea, taken raw, sounds a lot like thermal depolymerization, which does have a test plant up. But the TD guys aren't proposing a 100% replacement for oil, or making claims that their fuel is almost magical(the lower heat). It IS naturally lower in a number of contaminants such as sulfur, but nothing magical.

not for DVDs, but: http://dansdata.com/gz083.htm

Any decent electronics project book will verify that any copper or aluminum wire will gain resistance with increasing temperature.

If you want a quick link, though, how about this article at Dan's Data about power supplies which actually gives some basic theory? It's a little suspect in that it's a review of a particular brand of power supply, and Dan's Data isn't as widely known as Tom's Hardware or Anandtech. What do you want from the very first Google result for the search "warmer power supplies draw more current", though? It also happens that he's right (about the issue, anyway -- I've never reviewed or purchased Topower power supplies).

IBM Model M Space Saver

http://www.dansdata.com/images/clicky2/spacesaver1280.jpg

I found mine brand new on e-bay

Ah, I see. My main sources of information about PAE are forums and this article: http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm which basically says that PAE was disabled from doing anything in Windows XP SP2. I'm assuming you use a server version of Windows or something then? That's pretty interesting. XP x64 was pretty stupid, but Vista x64 is just as good (or bad, depending on your opinion) as Vista x86. Driver support is definitely better than it was for XP Pro x64, since driver makers have to make both versions of a Vista driver for it to be certified or whatever Microsoft does to approve drivers.
I still don't understand why anything pre 64 bit would require over 4GB of RAM, but then I don't have much experience with servers or anything of that sort.

I've seen the MacBook Air in person and it is an amazing design. It really is incredible how light it is. That said, it's pricey (not that Apple minds that) and what I really wish they would have made would have been...
- 10 or 11" screen
- 8 or 16 GB solid-state drive--for a secondary machine which WON'T be used for lots of DV capture, storing your whole iTunes library, etc., a small drive is fine
- built-in CF reader, and you could get a big CF card to be used as a TimeMachine volume

In other news, I do have a (non-Pro, non-Air) MacBook and the drive is ridicuously easy to get in and out. (Remove the battery, loosen three captive screws, pull away the L-shaped piece of metal, slide out the drive) and I'd like to experiment with some kind of SSD, either a 'proper' drive or a CF/SD/whatever card in a SATA adapter. Any suggestions on where to start? A newegg search for 'sata ssd' shows an 8 GB unit for $210 and a 16 GB one for $340. Searching for 'sata cf adapter' shows a $40 unit--could I just get one of those and a fast CF card? This page ends with the conclusion "A serious SSD a CompactFlash card is not" but it is from 2000 (but then again, shows as being updated a just a few months ago. I've written to the author.) Any thoughts?

Ahem, this has already been mostly the case here, at-least in Victoria, for some time.

"The Control of Weapons (Amendment) Regulations 1998 came into effect on 23 November 1998.
Under these regulations it is prohibited to import, sell, manufacture, possess and use laser
pointers which emit a laser beam with an accessible emission limit greater than 1mW, i.e. Class
3R. Laser pointers are not commercially available in Class 3B or 4.
Any laser pointers of Class 3R should be handed in to your nearest police station. Penalty for
possession and use is $6000 or 6 months imprisonment."

http://www.adm.monash.edu/ohse/assets/docs/information-sheets/lasers.pdf
with reference to
http://www.dms.dpc.vic.gov.au/Domino/Web_Notes/LDMS/PubStatbook.nsf/0/AEB69CB670D335CDCA256E5B0021A5D7/$FILE/98-105sr.pdf

But there has always been some exception to Scientific uses:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/wa/consol_reg/rsr1983337/s53b.html
As outlined by Dan,

http://www.dansdata.com/nexus.htm
I expect Dan to have something to say about this on his blog soon.

There are audiophiles out there who claim you can easily spot the difference with a high end audio card vs an onboard solution.
I guess it depends on your use of the thing, are you a music listener? Movie watcher, perhaps a gamer?

I am all 3 (only occassionally, I admit) but I have a 'proper' but basic home theatre reciever from a loungeroom hooked up to my onboard asus soundcard, it's a Pioneer VSX-D711 nothing major but it is a proper Dolby 7.1 reciever, accepts DD 5.1 signals, I think DTS and of course standard 3xRCA headphone analog signals.
It's coupled with 4 actual DECENT speakers, the sound I get out of my PC is far far superior to what most people have with a high end soundcard and 'PC Speakers"

Sure I might get better sound from a proper sound card too but I would wager that speakers and headphone quality is far far far more important than soundcard quality.
http://www.dansdata.com/m4kit.htm
4 of those, 400$ AUD
1 half decent reciever from ebay - 250$ AUD

No need to pay 120$ for a soundcard, not buying some crappy 'box set' of Klipsch, Bose or Logitech speakers either.

Onboard has been 'good enough' for a long long time.
Oh and as a bonus, if I ever give up PC gaming and move in with a wife / girlfriend / whatever I can put my Pioneer reciever under a half ddecent TV in the spare room, hook up my 4 'proper' speakers and use it as originally intended as a spare amp for TV / Xbox 360 / PS3 (since no doubt the wife would 'steal' the current receiver and HDTV in the regular loungeroom)

The One True Keyboard?. I have one of those, my wife hates it because of the sound.

I thought the Tesla Motors cars were all electric? How do you intend to go cross country with an all electric car? I don't think the rules will allow for you to chase it with a big generator truck to recharge the car every 200 miles. The way the rules are written, it sounds to me like your car is pretty much going to have to be gasoline or diesel powered because that's the only way you're going to be able to refuel it when you're 1000 miles from home. Sneaking in behind shopping malls or something every 200 miles and plugging it into an outside wall outlet is probably not going to work.

...but was never popular.

http://www.dansdata.com/ifeel.htm

Sort of. You only need as many pixels as the eye can see at the distance the display is used at(and maybe some extra for leaning in). If you jump through some hoops, you can come up with a resolution for a given distance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye#Acuity
http://www.dansdata.com/gz029.htm

Piggy-backing on Dan's hand waving, 300 dpi at 1 foot is a decent rule of thumb, and waving my own hands, 1 foot is a reasonable minimum distance for a handheld device(I don't imagine most people holding something any closer than this for long periods of time, opinions may vary). So for a screen that is 5 x 10 inches, the benefits for going past 1500 X 3000 pixels rapidly diminish, especially for video/animation. For smaller screens, the pixel count is (obviously) even lower. So if you aren't in need of extraordinary resolution on a large screen, current pixel counts are pretty close to 'enough', especially for screens that don't occupy huge portions of your field of view, so you don't need to factor increases(especially large, continuous increases) in resolution into the comparison.

So we are at least on the threshold where increases in resolution are done 'because we can' rather than 'because there are obvious benefits', for lots of devices. Plenty of people already don't see a whole lot of benefit in the move to HDTV; Ultra-HDTV or whatever is going to be an even harder sell, as the difference will only show up at very close distances or on very large screens(and plenty of people already have the largest screen that they want as furniture).

High resolution text is probably orthogonal to a discussion about ray tracing, and it seems to be the biggest current motivation for increasing display resolution.

-FL

When I read the headline I thought the article would be about this man. My mistake.