Because there is an entire technology base on Earth geared around the humanoid form.
A CNC lathe doesn't hold the tool with a miniature human hand, and there is a good reason for that. Most of technology base on Earth has nothing to do with humanoid form. Visit a factory - it's full of machines doing their machinery things, and only now and then you can see a small control panel that a human can use. Machine grips come in different shapes and forms (chucks, collets, etc.) but none of them resembles a human hand.
In this case it just looks like they are sending stuff up in "as is" condition. Clearly the thing is incomplete, and as such it would be of zero use. It's like "using" a car without wheels. This robot requires more labor to move to where it is needed, then to program (or operate in real time) and then to put it back. I think it is telling that the robot would be permanently placed into a lab compartment, probably to never see the light of day again. There are enough humans on board, and they are not that busy to not help each other when another pair of hands is needed for some job.
I think it would be far more valuable to send a robot that can work in vacuum and that has arms and legs. That would be something of interest. We need such robots everywhere, not just on LEO. But this one looks like a prototype. It doesn't solve any problem, and even if we see it as testing of its hardware, there is hardly anything to test. Its electronics won't behave any differently from tons of other electronic equipment that is already there, and its mechanical functions - if they depend on zero-G to operate then it's useless. IMO, it should stay dirtside until it is done right. Unless, of course, NASA just tries to clear the floor by sending junk up.
continuing automated surveillance doesn't default to voyeurism since it could also just be procrastination.
It will be difficult to explain it this way because the school conveniently "forgot" to turn off surveillance in 40+ other cases, and apparently amassed thousands of pictures.
the prosecutors have a harder time proving some law was broken. Claiming the fifth might imply guilt, but the defendants (ideally) can't be prosecuted until proven guilty.
Silence also means that the defendant can't refute anything that the prosecutor says.
If not exposed to that event people with the genetic tendency may never have it happen.
Assuming it is so, it was the girl's responsibility then to either avoid everything (since anything might be the triggering event) or at least announce to everyone she ever comes across that she is in danger and they should refrain from anything at all while in her presence. Lacking that, no reasonable person would ever see a scanner as a dangerous device.
In fact, Russian agriculture prospered after the land was taken away from the capitalist land-owners and handed over the people who worked it.
More precisely, the land was taken from individual owners and given to a committee. Tragedy of commons followed immediately. Who would work 50% better than other people if all your hard labor will be diluted among hundreds of slackers? Most likely your efforts will be either ignored or ridiculed; if your neighbor sees you working hard he can slow down and smoke. Farms went into decline, and workers saw themselves just as employees of some abstract "management". Things were so bad that local workers didn't even want to do some work, but thanks to government owning everything and everyone, they arranged for engineers from the city to be taken away from their drafting boards and workbenches, against their will loaded into buses and driven into some huge potato field, where those engineers were told to go and gather potatoes.
A few op-amps. One configured as a sawtooth generator. The second as a comparator.
It would cost more. The reason is that you need at least one RC pair to set the frequency, and you need a few more resistors to set the gain for those OAs, and the variable threshold for the comparator. And still an OA as a comparator is not an ideal solution, with gain set too high it may become unstable, or its bandwidth may drop below your intended switching rate. A good comparator here should have a hysteresis, and you can get such a comparator at Digikey for something like $0.64.
In any case, this is all doable, of course, but it can't beat a microcontroller in a SOIC8 package (ATTiny) where you just apply power, connect your LED to the PWM output, and connect your control to some other pin... A microcontroller today is cheaper than just one tantalum capacitor. And it allows you to create any input/output dependency, not just what your OAs are set to do. The pure hardware design won't let you build a pulsing light, for example - but an MCU design can do that and more. From a hobbyist POV the MCU is the way to go. Doing it in hardware makes sense only when you are dealing with specific requirements that aren't achievable by the MCU; latency comes to mind as an example - a popular "do or die" requirement in ALC circuits.
But people above claim that, if I complete the turn when light turns red, I break the law!
Once you are at the intersection you must clear it in a safe manner, regardless of lights - especially if you are turning, then it's not clear which light would govern your actions. I used to see this situation every morning at one place: when the light turns green the intersection ahead is still packed with cars.
If this hardware geek spends days solving a CPU-meets-Windows 7 problem, what chance do mere mortals have?"
You need first to show me a "mere mortal" who has, and uses, an engineering sample CPU. There is a very good reason why -ES parts are marked as such - because they have bugs. And those bugs will be a problem sooner or later.
So the whole sob story can be reduced to this. The guy runs software on a prototype hardware, and the software crashes. In other breaking news, dog bites man.
Not necessarily. The efficiency of this dimmer is nearly 100% (assuming PWM use) and you can have good linearity of the light output. You won't get that with a ballast resistor.
There is a reason soldering iron handles are bright yellow.
I haven't seen a professional soldering iron with a yellow handle. Usually they are black or sometimes cyan as it is a trademark Weller color. Hakko was traditionally black but now has blue irons too.
All these irons are pretty safe - in part because they come with enclosed stands, and in part because the handle's shape allows you to feel the position of your grip without looking. After a few years of practice burns of that type just don't happen.
The most popular type of a light burn among novices is produced by holding the part with fingers and soldering it.
[...] having more responsibility and being more mature.
Indeed many people make that argument, and I believe there is some truth in it; though there are some purely physiological aspects of growth that are hard to accelerate. However I just don't see how it might be possible to revert to earlier versions of the society. Back then children were seen as cheap biological robots; peasants made lots of them, and plugged them into the farm work as early as they could physically do it. Some of that work was harmful to the children, some died early (though who didn't back then?)
I see the same problem in crime. A teenager can become a career criminal by the time the courts see him as an adult. This is also a disconnect between physical ability to do things and the opinion of the society about his status.
So today intellectual maturity is delayed by the society, moved into later and later periods of life. But biological maturity is pretty much the same as it was thousands of years ago. So we get a bunch of young adults who are still legally "children." This means that (a) they are exempt from rules of the adult world, and (b) they are denied the privileges of the adult world. (a) facilitates irresponsible behavior, and (b) limits access to legal help. If that Irish girl was an adult, for example, she'd either quit that school (being free to attend or not) or she'd sue everyone involved; and she could get a concealed carry permit and use it every day. Children, however, are something like property - they are slaves of their parents and their school; they have no choice, they have no control, they have no escape. That's what causes suicides and, IMO, a good share of Columbine style murders.
Even if we suddenly decided that children at age 12 should be declared adults, can we do it? Today's society requires considerably more from its members than a peasants' village back in 1500's. There are far more ways to get into trouble. I don't know what the solution to that might be.
The age of consent should be set based on the average age that teens become sexually active.
Children can drive a car and shoot a gun at age of 10 years, if not earlier. However it doesn't mean they are smart enough and responsible enough to do it right.
The recent case of that Irish girl who suicided after bullying demonstrates that pretty well. Every teen involved was just not mature enough for things that their bodies were capable of (be it having sex or throwing cans of soft drinks or doing some other assault.)
I don't think even google can process hundreds of petabytes *DAILY*
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a room full of racks full of 6U cards full of Virtex-6 FPGAs. Decrypting in real time is implausible, but it's enough to detect a ciphertext in the message to plant a big red flag at both endpoints, and then use alternative technologies (human investigators, keyloggers, rubber hose, Sodium Pentothal...) to get to the content of the message. It's easy to do when you are the law.
The only communication that is guaranteed to be secret is absence of communication.
but bats shoot more than once or twice. They fire continuously and they move, unlike this system.
More importantly, bats don't need to locate sources of sounds that are far away (as in hundreds of meters.) Bats are more interested in reflections from nearby objects; they will learn about remote objects in due course, when they fly closer to them.
Depending on the number of users, $100k for an in-house exchange system is not that bad.
If you have <100 users then you need a $500 box from Fry's, then Linux, Postfix and Cyrus. If you have more users then the $100K price is probably not a concern.
If there's a frontal impact and the vehicle was moving (as opposed to, say, being stopped in traffic and being impacted from behind and pushed into the vehicle in front), then the spike deploys and impales the driver.
There is no physical difference between you doing 30 mph and hitting a wall, and you doing 30 mph and hitting a car that ran the STOP sign. However in the second case you aren't guilty, and the impalement should be postponed.
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Because there is an entire technology base on Earth geared around the humanoid form.
A CNC lathe doesn't hold the tool with a miniature human hand, and there is a good reason for that. Most of technology base on Earth has nothing to do with humanoid form. Visit a factory - it's full of machines doing their machinery things, and only now and then you can see a small control panel that a human can use. Machine grips come in different shapes and forms (chucks, collets, etc.) but none of them resembles a human hand.
In this case it just looks like they are sending stuff up in "as is" condition. Clearly the thing is incomplete, and as such it would be of zero use. It's like "using" a car without wheels. This robot requires more labor to move to where it is needed, then to program (or operate in real time) and then to put it back. I think it is telling that the robot would be permanently placed into a lab compartment, probably to never see the light of day again. There are enough humans on board, and they are not that busy to not help each other when another pair of hands is needed for some job.
I think it would be far more valuable to send a robot that can work in vacuum and that has arms and legs. That would be something of interest. We need such robots everywhere, not just on LEO. But this one looks like a prototype. It doesn't solve any problem, and even if we see it as testing of its hardware, there is hardly anything to test. Its electronics won't behave any differently from tons of other electronic equipment that is already there, and its mechanical functions - if they depend on zero-G to operate then it's useless. IMO, it should stay dirtside until it is done right. Unless, of course, NASA just tries to clear the floor by sending junk up.
Who goes to sleep with their laptop turned on and the camera pointed right at their face
Anyone who placed his laptop near the bed, was reading, and drifted to sleep at some point.
continuing automated surveillance doesn't default to voyeurism since it could also just be procrastination.
It will be difficult to explain it this way because the school conveniently "forgot" to turn off surveillance in 40+ other cases, and apparently amassed thousands of pictures.
the prosecutors have a harder time proving some law was broken. Claiming the fifth might imply guilt, but the defendants (ideally) can't be prosecuted until proven guilty.
Silence also means that the defendant can't refute anything that the prosecutor says.
If not exposed to that event people with the genetic tendency may never have it happen.
Assuming it is so, it was the girl's responsibility then to either avoid everything (since anything might be the triggering event) or at least announce to everyone she ever comes across that she is in danger and they should refrain from anything at all while in her presence. Lacking that, no reasonable person would ever see a scanner as a dangerous device.
In fact, Russian agriculture prospered after the land was taken away from the capitalist land-owners and handed over the people who worked it.
More precisely, the land was taken from individual owners and given to a committee. Tragedy of commons followed immediately. Who would work 50% better than other people if all your hard labor will be diluted among hundreds of slackers? Most likely your efforts will be either ignored or ridiculed; if your neighbor sees you working hard he can slow down and smoke. Farms went into decline, and workers saw themselves just as employees of some abstract "management". Things were so bad that local workers didn't even want to do some work, but thanks to government owning everything and everyone, they arranged for engineers from the city to be taken away from their drafting boards and workbenches, against their will loaded into buses and driven into some huge potato field, where those engineers were told to go and gather potatoes.
A few op-amps. One configured as a sawtooth generator. The second as a comparator.
It would cost more. The reason is that you need at least one RC pair to set the frequency, and you need a few more resistors to set the gain for those OAs, and the variable threshold for the comparator. And still an OA as a comparator is not an ideal solution, with gain set too high it may become unstable, or its bandwidth may drop below your intended switching rate. A good comparator here should have a hysteresis, and you can get such a comparator at Digikey for something like $0.64.
In any case, this is all doable, of course, but it can't beat a microcontroller in a SOIC8 package (ATTiny) where you just apply power, connect your LED to the PWM output, and connect your control to some other pin... A microcontroller today is cheaper than just one tantalum capacitor. And it allows you to create any input/output dependency, not just what your OAs are set to do. The pure hardware design won't let you build a pulsing light, for example - but an MCU design can do that and more. From a hobbyist POV the MCU is the way to go. Doing it in hardware makes sense only when you are dealing with specific requirements that aren't achievable by the MCU; latency comes to mind as an example - a popular "do or die" requirement in ALC circuits.
But people above claim that, if I complete the turn when light turns red, I break the law!
Once you are at the intersection you must clear it in a safe manner, regardless of lights - especially if you are turning, then it's not clear which light would govern your actions. I used to see this situation every morning at one place: when the light turns green the intersection ahead is still packed with cars.
If this hardware geek spends days solving a CPU-meets-Windows 7 problem, what chance do mere mortals have?"
You need first to show me a "mere mortal" who has, and uses, an engineering sample CPU. There is a very good reason why -ES parts are marked as such - because they have bugs. And those bugs will be a problem sooner or later.
So the whole sob story can be reduced to this. The guy runs software on a prototype hardware, and the software crashes. In other breaking news, dog bites man.
Most redundant use of a microprocessor, EVER.
Not necessarily. The efficiency of this dimmer is nearly 100% (assuming PWM use) and you can have good linearity of the light output. You won't get that with a ballast resistor.
Good thing I'm not paranoid.
Good thing that nobody so far had a reason to point a finger at you. Once they do, it doesn't matter if you are paranoid or not.
There is a reason soldering iron handles are bright yellow.
I haven't seen a professional soldering iron with a yellow handle. Usually they are black or sometimes cyan as it is a trademark Weller color. Hakko was traditionally black but now has blue irons too.
All these irons are pretty safe - in part because they come with enclosed stands, and in part because the handle's shape allows you to feel the position of your grip without looking. After a few years of practice burns of that type just don't happen.
The most popular type of a light burn among novices is produced by holding the part with fingers and soldering it.
[...] having more responsibility and being more mature.
Indeed many people make that argument, and I believe there is some truth in it; though there are some purely physiological aspects of growth that are hard to accelerate. However I just don't see how it might be possible to revert to earlier versions of the society. Back then children were seen as cheap biological robots; peasants made lots of them, and plugged them into the farm work as early as they could physically do it. Some of that work was harmful to the children, some died early (though who didn't back then?)
I see the same problem in crime. A teenager can become a career criminal by the time the courts see him as an adult. This is also a disconnect between physical ability to do things and the opinion of the society about his status.
So today intellectual maturity is delayed by the society, moved into later and later periods of life. But biological maturity is pretty much the same as it was thousands of years ago. So we get a bunch of young adults who are still legally "children." This means that (a) they are exempt from rules of the adult world, and (b) they are denied the privileges of the adult world. (a) facilitates irresponsible behavior, and (b) limits access to legal help. If that Irish girl was an adult, for example, she'd either quit that school (being free to attend or not) or she'd sue everyone involved; and she could get a concealed carry permit and use it every day. Children, however, are something like property - they are slaves of their parents and their school; they have no choice, they have no control, they have no escape. That's what causes suicides and, IMO, a good share of Columbine style murders.
Even if we suddenly decided that children at age 12 should be declared adults, can we do it? Today's society requires considerably more from its members than a peasants' village back in 1500's. There are far more ways to get into trouble. I don't know what the solution to that might be.
The age of consent should be set based on the average age that teens become sexually active.
Children can drive a car and shoot a gun at age of 10 years, if not earlier. However it doesn't mean they are smart enough and responsible enough to do it right.
The recent case of that Irish girl who suicided after bullying demonstrates that pretty well. Every teen involved was just not mature enough for things that their bodies were capable of (be it having sex or throwing cans of soft drinks or doing some other assault.)
I don't think even google can process hundreds of petabytes *DAILY*
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a room full of racks full of 6U cards full of Virtex-6 FPGAs. Decrypting in real time is implausible, but it's enough to detect a ciphertext in the message to plant a big red flag at both endpoints, and then use alternative technologies (human investigators, keyloggers, rubber hose, Sodium Pentothal...) to get to the content of the message. It's easy to do when you are the law.
The only communication that is guaranteed to be secret is absence of communication.
Just "stodevjatnadcat'".
but bats shoot more than once or twice. They fire continuously and they move, unlike this system.
More importantly, bats don't need to locate sources of sounds that are far away (as in hundreds of meters.) Bats are more interested in reflections from nearby objects; they will learn about remote objects in due course, when they fly closer to them.
Isolate them, and ask each one who the other says is guilty.
"I have no way of knowing what the other brother may say."
Before or after she finds the CP on the computer?
It doesn't matter, it won't be believed before and after.
The simplest course would have been to plant the photos and then give an anonymous tip to the wife.
Who the wife is going to believe, her husband or some anonymous caller?
Depending on the number of users, $100k for an in-house exchange system is not that bad.
If you have <100 users then you need a $500 box from Fry's, then Linux, Postfix and Cyrus. If you have more users then the $100K price is probably not a concern.
If there's a frontal impact and the vehicle was moving (as opposed to, say, being stopped in traffic and being impacted from behind and pushed into the vehicle in front), then the spike deploys and impales the driver.
There is no physical difference between you doing 30 mph and hitting a wall, and you doing 30 mph and hitting a car that ran the STOP sign. However in the second case you aren't guilty, and the impalement should be postponed.
1 in 40 people who engage in these activities are not any more dangerous while doing it.
Does it mean that they normally drive as if they were constantly texting, even though they don't? Those people should be removed from roads :-)
Here is the English version. Thanks for the clarification, and hopefully this will be of use to everyone with Chrome.
By the way, most of these items are removed from Iron.