On this planet you are expected to turn on your car lights, manually or otherwise, if you leave at 2am. This may be related to a little known fact that it is usually pitch dark at night.
The only exception of this rule would be during a massive solar flare. Like if you would care then...
what's so "sporty" about a 4 tonne diesel powered truck
The "utility" is the key word here. An SUV is large enough to carry a lot of sport gear (such as mountain climbing kits - they aren't small) and it is powerful enough to get you close to the mountain.
The X-rays are indeed produced when electrons are stopped. The energy has to go somewhere... some into phosphor, some emitted as X-rays.
However, Roentgen tubes use much higher voltages (100 kV at least) than CRTs (about 25 kV), and so the intensity of X rays is much lower. The screen itself, made of thick glass with a trace amount of lead, is sufficient to stop them. I tried to measure the radiation at the screen with a dosimeter, and got nothing except the usual ambient radiation (10 micro Roentgen / hour or so).
Well, Hyperion are either mad, or they think there's money to be had. Amiga Inc got $65700 just by charging membership for the aforementioned Amiga club.
Here you have it. The business model of Hyperion is now obvious - cater to retro crowd who likes to pay for old memories:-)
Seriously, though, this release (as well as the OS *and* the hardware) seems to be utterly useless because it does not solve any problem that would be solved by other, more efficient and more convenient, means. Aside from the "old memories" stuff, of course - collectors buy even worse things.
These blocks are too unreliable to make anything worthwhile, and the design will not last. The built-in batteries are unacceptable, and as other people already commented, the probability of failure grows fast with the number of components. Sooner or later the batteries will be failing, and while they are busy at that you will be busy frantically debugging the design. Let me tell you, power problems are highly unpleasant to debug even if you have a decent scope because failures at some marginal, barely working, Vcc will be intermittent and undetectable.
If you want to learn electronics (aside from a university), get a book or two, and read them. Then get some similation software and learn how circuits behave. Then get some premade eval boards of whatever you want (MCU, CPLD, FPGA etc.) and play with them. If you are still interested, then you probably want to work as an engineer, since only then you will have access to all the expensive (and neat) toys and gizmos.
But if you don't plan to become an engineer, but only want to make some IR-operated control for your house, don't try to use those "blocks", or bredboards, or wire wrap - that is nothing but waste of time. Begin with a design on paper. Then simulate it if you can (you can if you have a computer.) Then either etch the PCB, or order one (tools are free, job about $100) and assemble your new toy yourself.
If you can get away with using standard eval boards for your purpose, definitely do so. Fact is, more and more "hardware" is now implemented with DSP technologies and highly integrated, specialized ICs. You don't want, in fact, study how to make a decent RF amplifier - you buy one from Minicircuits for less than a dollar. You don't want to make a radio with 20 transistors - instead you use one or two chips (Analog Devices). Instead of going to the basics you can embrace the modern technology, it is much easier to work with, and many tools for the beginners can be had for free (see Xilinx, for example), and the visibility into your circuit is much, much better [unless you have a million dollar lab.]
The number of "joe inventors" in the whole recorded history of humanity who got rich inventing can be counted on fingers of one hand.
Most of patents are filed today by megacorporations, as a weapon against competition, and many of those patents are trivial extensions of known principles and ideas.
Yes, there is no privacy issues in this case. The court can order far more invasive investigations when needed, and the compelling need for a good investigation here is obvious.
What *might* be a problem, however, is the reliability of the data. Imagine, you participate in a fender bender at 10 mph. But the black box says you were doing 50! You know you didn't and couldn't, but the stupid Flash-based thing got its numbers messed up - and you go to jail for that? If these numbers are to be accepted in court of law, they must be truly reliable, with a good techlonogical assurance of the fact.
Indeed, I don't deny that it would be nice to say "Computer, where is..." However, you can ask a human "where am I?" and get an answer. You can not ask a computer, not today.
My example is based on idea that the other human knows where he is (which is usually true), and you do not need to draw a map for him to know - you give him the map so that he can draw the route for you. So essentially my example can be distilled to the following requests:
"Computer, where am I? I won't tell you anything else about me."
"Computer, how to get from here to ZZZ?"
The modern AI can do the (2), but there is no way it can do the (1) - because it is not there, with you, to know where you are:-) But the clerk in that coffee shop definitely knows where you both are, and being a local he is in the best possible position to advise.
But generally, can the photo technology be useful? Most technologies find uses somewhere; the question is "how much", in both usage and cost. This particular technology seems to be an overkill for a very simple problem, and excellent solutions (GPS) are *already* available. If someone wants to be as independent as it gets, he grabs a GPS receiver, maybe a paper map, and that's all it takes even if you travel across several countries, across all climate zones, in day and night conditions, in any weather, in a desert or in a city, and most importantly outside of cellular coverage. You just can't ask for more than that:-)
So I don't see this photo technology taking root whatsoever. But face recognition... license plates... traffic control - these areas can benefit from a good graphical AI. Where the society needs those benefits (?) is a completely different question...
Street signs and talking to people in corner shops isn't always an option though, especially if you were in say, Tokyo, and you didn't speak japanese;)
Well, I don't speak Japanese at all, however I can say this: "YUTAKA BILD 1F Yokoyama-cho Hachioji-shi Tokyo -- mappu nanitozo" and give him the map and a pen. He will circle where you are, where you'd better be, and how to get there - all without saying a word. I'm curious, BTW, would a native Japanese understand what I wrote above?
If the meeting is so important in the foreign land, I would think that you would do little more homework than to just depend on a cameraphone!!
If I am in a country which language I do not understand, my secret plan would be to take a taxi cab from the hotel (and back.) If the meeting is so important, I can not trust an inexperienced traveller (myself) to deliver me to the location and back.
Most of New York is actually quite flat and colorless. The pride is mostly in lower Manhattan, but you won't get lost there anyway, try all you can. Just walk into any street-level business and ask for directions; the clerks are friendly, it's their job at least. If you go north... well, why would you want to have a meeting *there* ??? If you must, you probably need to research your route beforehand, lest you get stuck in a bad place. Also, taking pictures from a car is not a easy plan, and while you wait for the response from the server there will be about 100,000 angry motorists behind you. And no, you can't park anywhere:-)
In any case, the photographic approach seems to be overly passive. Why can't you walk to a street sign (street corner) and take down the street names, whatever characters you can comprehend? Then send SMS to the server, and get back either a SMS or a picture. I hope you know what city you are in or near?:-)
Even simpler solution is to call the server and speak to it. Simple voice recognition can be used to transliterate foreign street names or ambiguously sounding English/French ones. And at any time you can ask for an operator (for an extra fee, but if you must, you can.) Comes hands-free too, for continuous driving.
This service already exists, though, in form of many 411 centers that do nothing but answer questions. And they answer not just mapping questions, but anything else a traveller may need. The work force can be hired locally (thus knowing the area well.)
You presume that each and every building is unique and was built by its own architect. This may be so for downtown areas, but is utterly false in residential and industrial areas - that's where you would need such a system most. The houses in those areas are often built from the same set of blueprints, and likely by the same builder. Even people have trouble navigating by sight in those areas, they have to look for subtler navigational signs, like street numbers:-)
... for the www.iLocate.com in 2000:-) Get loads of VC cash, never have the product done, go public right before that...
Seriously, this feat is practically impossible. I guess, if you try hard, you can cover a few downtown areas. However the resolution of those little cameras is ridiculously bad. Add variable lighting conditions (day/night, sunrise/noon/sunset), add random camera angle and tilt, and seasonal changes, and local construction, and all you end up with is a fuzzy picture of something.
GPS is the way to do it, and it's free, and it gives you continuous route, with speed and compass indicators as well. I can understand image recognition underground, for example, or indoors - where GPS is not going to work - but outdoors it has no competition.
No need for sarcastic remarks. The guy obviously does this work for a living. I was in a similar position too. And yes, he can have all these things as a matter of course because businesses buy them, not make them. Hardly anyone on this planet can do all these things, and there is no need for that either (aside from a high-tech hobby.)
Hardware is not cheap if we are talking about good hardware. It also needs care and feeding (such as UPS power, cooling, new fans once a year, cleaning, rack space, RAM, RAID etc.) You can save a lot in any business environment this way. Even in home conditions you will save a lot on energy if you have only one box 24/7 and not two.
the scrap metal alone is worth more than 1300 pounds!
By the time you raise it to the surface its worth will be negative.
Re:Cost of switching distributions?
on
Red Hat Recap
·
· Score: 1
The differences between RH9 and SuSE 9 are significant, mostly in installation and maintenance area. The up2date is completely different, and you can run your own. Printers are done differently somewhat. Even/etc/rc.d tree is different. In a large company, such as with 100 boxes, this may be a problem - but not an insurmountable one.
The pain of migration from Win2k to WinXP... nobody in his right mind would do that. Win2k is the best OS that MS ever came up with. But if you insist, that migration would be pretty much automatic.
Re:What, no editorial?
on
Red Hat Recap
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Why does Red Hat get a free pass from the community and from the FSF for constricting our freedom as badly as Microsoft ever has?
It doesn't get a free pass; RH is just free to offer any stupid EULA they can come up with. However if you accept such EULA then it would be none other than you who constricted your own freedom.
As someone else said, the easiest way to smuggle a bomb into the USA is to hide it in a heroin shipment... Considering the sheer volume of drugs that are delivered into the country on a schedule as precise as clockwork, this seems to be a very practical method.
I don't believe that 500,000 volt thing. They can have such a voltage; however the current will be miniscule, like microamperes. The visual effect may be entertaining, but that happens only over the air, which is dielectric. As soon as the arc enters the body, the resistance of the body is millions times less, and the voltage drops on this segment of the circuit - but the current is still the same; and so the power that the tazee gets is quite low.
Regardless of electrotechnics, it's the power that stuns, disables or kills. And what power we are talking about here? Just a battery or two? Forget it. Try tazer, and you will lose it along with the iPod, and probably the mugger will be mad as hell too.
once you have a large enough amount of capital... simply invest this money wisely, and enjoy not puny 0.05% return but much better one. Even your local bank probably offers you more interest than a casino would bring in, with no risk at all.
A desktop is different from a portable (in case it is not blatantly obvious:-) This simputer thingy runs on batteries, and you can have it with you anywhere. A desktop would be sitting at your house, and you can use it only when you are at home.
Slashdot Mirror
The only exception of this rule would be during a massive solar flare. Like if you would care then...
Just remember to charge her by the hour. Fools and their money part quickly.
The "utility" is the key word here. An SUV is large enough to carry a lot of sport gear (such as mountain climbing kits - they aren't small) and it is powerful enough to get you close to the mountain.
However, Roentgen tubes use much higher voltages (100 kV at least) than CRTs (about 25 kV), and so the intensity of X rays is much lower. The screen itself, made of thick glass with a trace amount of lead, is sufficient to stop them. I tried to measure the radiation at the screen with a dosimeter, and got nothing except the usual ambient radiation (10 micro Roentgen / hour or so).
Here you have it. The business model of Hyperion is now obvious - cater to retro crowd who likes to pay for old memories :-)
Seriously, though, this release (as well as the OS *and* the hardware) seems to be utterly useless because it does not solve any problem that would be solved by other, more efficient and more convenient, means. Aside from the "old memories" stuff, of course - collectors buy even worse things.
If you want to learn electronics (aside from a university), get a book or two, and read them. Then get some similation software and learn how circuits behave. Then get some premade eval boards of whatever you want (MCU, CPLD, FPGA etc.) and play with them. If you are still interested, then you probably want to work as an engineer, since only then you will have access to all the expensive (and neat) toys and gizmos.
But if you don't plan to become an engineer, but only want to make some IR-operated control for your house, don't try to use those "blocks", or bredboards, or wire wrap - that is nothing but waste of time. Begin with a design on paper. Then simulate it if you can (you can if you have a computer.) Then either etch the PCB, or order one (tools are free, job about $100) and assemble your new toy yourself.
If you can get away with using standard eval boards for your purpose, definitely do so. Fact is, more and more "hardware" is now implemented with DSP technologies and highly integrated, specialized ICs. You don't want, in fact, study how to make a decent RF amplifier - you buy one from Minicircuits for less than a dollar. You don't want to make a radio with 20 transistors - instead you use one or two chips (Analog Devices). Instead of going to the basics you can embrace the modern technology, it is much easier to work with, and many tools for the beginners can be had for free (see Xilinx, for example), and the visibility into your circuit is much, much better [unless you have a million dollar lab.]
Most of patents are filed today by megacorporations, as a weapon against competition, and many of those patents are trivial extensions of known principles and ideas.
What *might* be a problem, however, is the reliability of the data. Imagine, you participate in a fender bender at 10 mph. But the black box says you were doing 50! You know you didn't and couldn't, but the stupid Flash-based thing got its numbers messed up - and you go to jail for that? If these numbers are to be accepted in court of law, they must be truly reliable, with a good techlonogical assurance of the fact.
My example is based on idea that the other human knows where he is (which is usually true), and you do not need to draw a map for him to know - you give him the map so that he can draw the route for you. So essentially my example can be distilled to the following requests:
The modern AI can do the (2), but there is no way it can do the (1) - because it is not there, with you, to know where you are :-) But the clerk in that coffee shop definitely knows where you both are, and being a local he is in the best possible position to advise.
But generally, can the photo technology be useful? Most technologies find uses somewhere; the question is "how much", in both usage and cost. This particular technology seems to be an overkill for a very simple problem, and excellent solutions (GPS) are *already* available. If someone wants to be as independent as it gets, he grabs a GPS receiver, maybe a paper map, and that's all it takes even if you travel across several countries, across all climate zones, in day and night conditions, in any weather, in a desert or in a city, and most importantly outside of cellular coverage. You just can't ask for more than that :-)
So I don't see this photo technology taking root whatsoever. But face recognition... license plates... traffic control - these areas can benefit from a good graphical AI. Where the society needs those benefits (?) is a completely different question...
Well, I don't speak Japanese at all, however I can say this: "YUTAKA BILD 1F Yokoyama-cho Hachioji-shi Tokyo -- mappu nanitozo" and give him the map and a pen. He will circle where you are, where you'd better be, and how to get there - all without saying a word. I'm curious, BTW, would a native Japanese understand what I wrote above?
If I am in a country which language I do not understand, my secret plan would be to take a taxi cab from the hotel (and back.) If the meeting is so important, I can not trust an inexperienced traveller (myself) to deliver me to the location and back.
In any case, the photographic approach seems to be overly passive. Why can't you walk to a street sign (street corner) and take down the street names, whatever characters you can comprehend? Then send SMS to the server, and get back either a SMS or a picture. I hope you know what city you are in or near? :-)
Even simpler solution is to call the server and speak to it. Simple voice recognition can be used to transliterate foreign street names or ambiguously sounding English/French ones. And at any time you can ask for an operator (for an extra fee, but if you must, you can.) Comes hands-free too, for continuous driving.
This service already exists, though, in form of many 411 centers that do nothing but answer questions. And they answer not just mapping questions, but anything else a traveller may need. The work force can be hired locally (thus knowing the area well.)
You presume that each and every building is unique and was built by its own architect. This may be so for downtown areas, but is utterly false in residential and industrial areas - that's where you would need such a system most. The houses in those areas are often built from the same set of blueprints, and likely by the same builder. Even people have trouble navigating by sight in those areas, they have to look for subtler navigational signs, like street numbers :-)
Seriously, this feat is practically impossible. I guess, if you try hard, you can cover a few downtown areas. However the resolution of those little cameras is ridiculously bad. Add variable lighting conditions (day/night, sunrise/noon/sunset), add random camera angle and tilt, and seasonal changes, and local construction, and all you end up with is a fuzzy picture of something.
GPS is the way to do it, and it's free, and it gives you continuous route, with speed and compass indicators as well. I can understand image recognition underground, for example, or indoors - where GPS is not going to work - but outdoors it has no competition.
No need for sarcastic remarks. The guy obviously does this work for a living. I was in a similar position too. And yes, he can have all these things as a matter of course because businesses buy them, not make them. Hardly anyone on this planet can do all these things, and there is no need for that either (aside from a high-tech hobby.)
Hardware is not cheap if we are talking about good hardware. It also needs care and feeding (such as UPS power, cooling, new fans once a year, cleaning, rack space, RAM, RAID etc.) You can save a lot in any business environment this way. Even in home conditions you will save a lot on energy if you have only one box 24/7 and not two.
By the time you raise it to the surface its worth will be negative.
The pain of migration from Win2k to WinXP... nobody in his right mind would do that. Win2k is the best OS that MS ever came up with. But if you insist, that migration would be pretty much automatic.
It doesn't get a free pass; RH is just free to offer any stupid EULA they can come up with. However if you accept such EULA then it would be none other than you who constricted your own freedom.
He probably wanted to allienate them, as in making them more of an ally, but the word got misunderstood for a grammatically correct one.
As someone else said, the easiest way to smuggle a bomb into the USA is to hide it in a heroin shipment... Considering the sheer volume of drugs that are delivered into the country on a schedule as precise as clockwork, this seems to be a very practical method.
The whole trick is that when it *is* 1984, nobody will pay any attention.
Regardless of electrotechnics, it's the power that stuns, disables or kills. And what power we are talking about here? Just a battery or two? Forget it. Try tazer, and you will lose it along with the iPod, and probably the mugger will be mad as hell too.
once you have a large enough amount of capital ... simply invest this money wisely, and enjoy not puny 0.05% return but much better one. Even your local bank probably offers you more interest than a casino would bring in, with no risk at all.
A desktop is different from a portable (in case it is not blatantly obvious :-) This simputer thingy runs on batteries, and you can have it with you anywhere. A desktop would be sitting at your house, and you can use it only when you are at home.