One way to avoid problems is to only buy batteries that have been tested and approved by the device's manufacturer. Many of the reported problems with catastrophic battery failure can be traced back to no-name or counterfeit batteries that are missing crucial protective circuits and features.
The 3% figure quoted in this, and similar polls, is sampling error. That's the margin of error that can be attributed to a limited sample size. It does not include any errors generated by how the sample was selected. Sampling error is useful if you are doing things like testing parts on an assembly line, where every part is identical. When you are dealing with people, it can be misleading. It should be interpreted as a lower bound on the total error, that even if the poll is perfectly designed and conducted, the margin of error is 3%.
There are tables that list the sampling error for a given sample size. Larger samples reduce the error. A polling organization has to balance the sample size against the cost of conducting the poll.
Many cable systems are notorious for not setting the video and audio modulation levels to consistent values on all of their equipment. That's how you get wide variations in levels as you change channels, or when the channel's normal feed is replaced by a "drop in" commercial supplied by the cable company.
Just wondering... Suppose there *is* life on Mars, what gives us the right to drop all sorts of space junk on their planet? Let's face it, if alien probes were to crash on Earth, everyone would be up in arms...
We have flags. Hey, it worked for the Europeans in the New World.
I don't know if they are still doing it, but at one time, most of the pirate CD plants were owned and operated by the People's Liberation Army. The PLA owned and operated a wide variety of businesses. They were put under pressure by the central government to divest themselves of some of these businesses.
It's better than being in an unlicensed ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) band, along with wireless telephones, microwave ovens, and all sorts of industrial and commercial RF gadgets.
I don't know if the rules are similar in the UK, but in the USA, a licensed user has legal protection against interference from unlicensed users.
PDF files are not as portable as they should be. I've received PDF files that do not display properly on a Mac, but look OK on a Windows box. The problem seemed to be related to the document creation software assuming certain fonts are available on the recipient's system. I've also received PDF files that crash the viewer on some operating systems.
If you aren't running Mac OS or Windows, there may not be a PDF viewer available for your system.
I have a DVD full of old hardware and software manuals that were batch scanned and converted into PDF files. It did a nice job of putting the scans into a usable format.
The real world is more complicated than your bad joke.
Most American and European spacecraft undergo extensive compatibility testing on the ground before they are ever launched. This ensures that the communications systems on the spacecraft are compatible with the transmitters and receivers and other equipment in the satellite ground stations.
Among other things, the spacecraft's transmitter is tested for frequency accuracy and stability, proper modulation index, and other parameters that could affect the reliability of the communications link. The actual spacecraft hardware is tested with actual ground station hardware. Even if the builder of the spacecraft says that their hardware meets all of the specifications, they may have missed problems that become obvious during proper pre-launch testing with the real hardware.
Maybe they sell widgets, not software. Contributing fixes and patches back to the community is not going to directly affect the market for widgets.
Fortune 500 corporations have been active participants in computer user groups, such as SHARE and DECUS, since the 1950s. That often includes contributing software to user group libraries.
The notion that every scrap of "intellectual property" is precious, and must be jealously guarded, is a moral sickness, like the often repeated dictum that a corporation's only responsibility is to maximize shareholder value.
Software Defined Radios (SDR) have a huge appetite for processor cycles. I use radio in the general sense, to include audio, visual and data transmission. Imagine plugging an antenna or cable into an ADC (analog to digital convertor) board on your PC. You could then run applications to listen to AM, FM or digital radio, watch analog or digital television, get the current time from GPS, receive IP packets from a wireless LAN or microwave link. Almost anything you now do with dedicated hardware could be replaced by software. The military is pushing the technology because it makes it possible to give a soldier one radio that can communicate with all of the existing legacy military and civilian radio systems, foreign and domestic.
In the real world, you do the best job that you can with the resources that you are given. There may be a large difference between the "right way" to do something and the way things are actually done. You can bitch about it, or even quit your job. That doesn't change the situation. You have X dollars to accomplish your mission, where X decreases every year. You can try to be more efficient, but that doesn't work past a certain point. Things that used to be requirements get reclassified as "nice to have". You lay off people and/or don't replace them when they leave. You cancel or delay new engineering projects and engineering changes. You live with aging and obsolete equipment because there is no budget to replace it. You're lucky if you have enough people to keep it in working order. You eliminate "unnecessary" documentation, QA/QC and testing. You eliminate whole parts of the organization and hope that they were not critical to the mission.
The last person out the door is asked to stencil "Abandon In Place" on the building.
For its time, UCSD Pascal was an excellent language and operating system. Its main problems were price and politics, not performance or technical issues. Many people, including myself, wrote software for it. The speed penalty of the p-code interpreter was offset by the compactness of p-code, which was important on the memory-constrained PCs of the time. UCSD Pascal, like other alternative operating systems of the period, could not compete with MS-DOS and PC-DOS, which sold for well under $100, on price.
I think you are referring to the Mars Observer mission.
On August 21, 1993 the spacecraft transmitters were turned off during the final approach to Mars to protect the components against shock from the pressurization sequence. After the transmitter was turned off the tanks were supposed to be pressurized and then the transmitters turned back on and communications with Earth resumed, but no further signals were ever received on Earth.
Actually, it was their job. The flying clocks were used to check and adjust the atomic clocks and timing systems at remote locations. This kept all of the clocks in synchronization with a known margin of error. I don't know if they had to compensate for relativistic effects.
The algorithm's speed is supposed to be mainly dependent on the latency of main memory, not the CPU's cycle time. This means that there is much less of a gap between old and new hardware.
I used to know some people who regularly flew around the world with atomic (cesium) clocks, powered by batteries, as their carry-on baggage. They bought an extra ticket for the atomic clock, so it could have its own seat.
I can just imagine trying to explain it to security. Yes, it is an atomic clock. Yes, it is supposed to have all of those counting digits on the front panel. No, you can't take it apart to see how it works. No, I can't turn it off without making the whole trip pointless.
Another problem with liquid fuel rocket engines is making sure they will work after sitting idle many months in a very hostile environment. Fittings can leak, valves can leak or get stuck, propellants can freeze or deteriorate, moisture can cause corrosion or freeze into a plug inside a fuel line.
If you think you are too smart to be conned out of your money, you're wrong.
Mechanical Computers
on
First Computers
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· Score: 2, Interesting
My first computer was purely mechanical, no electrons involved. It was a DIGICOMP-1 from Edmund Scientific. You could program the thing to play NIM and a few other things with the included manual.
Later on I got a chance to use and program an RCA Spectra-70 in High School. The Spectra-70 was a poorly designed clone of an IBM mainframe. The school board had the computer, and each high school was given a teletype and a 110 baud modem. You could write programs in WATFOR (Waterloo FORTRAN), Dartmouth BASIC and RPG.
The first electronic computer that I actually owned was a TRS-80 Model 1 with 4K RAM, later upgraded to 16K RAM, and Extended BASIC.
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One way to avoid problems is to only buy batteries that have been tested and approved by the device's manufacturer. Many of the reported problems with catastrophic battery failure can be traced back to no-name or counterfeit batteries that are missing crucial protective circuits and features.
There are tables that list the sampling error for a given sample size. Larger samples reduce the error. A polling organization has to balance the sample size against the cost of conducting the poll.
Many cable systems are notorious for not setting the video and audio modulation levels to consistent values on all of their equipment. That's how you get wide variations in levels as you change channels, or when the channel's normal feed is replaced by a "drop in" commercial supplied by the cable company.
We have flags. Hey, it worked for the Europeans in the New World.
The difference is rationalization.
Most people believe that they are "better than average" drivers, even if they have no evidence to support that belief. That's just human nature.
So they could be sold in markets where copyrights are (sometimes) enforced and the hologram matters.
I don't know if they are still doing it, but at one time, most of the pirate CD plants were owned and operated by the People's Liberation Army. The PLA owned and operated a wide variety of businesses. They were put under pressure by the central government to divest themselves of some of these businesses.
I don't know if the rules are similar in the UK, but in the USA, a licensed user has legal protection against interference from unlicensed users.
I have a DVD full of old hardware and software manuals that were batch scanned and converted into PDF files. It did a nice job of putting the scans into a usable format.
South Vietnam was conquered by NVA regulars, not by the VC, who were effectively destroyed during the Tet Offensive.
Most American and European spacecraft undergo extensive compatibility testing on the ground before they are ever launched. This ensures that the communications systems on the spacecraft are compatible with the transmitters and receivers and other equipment in the satellite ground stations. Among other things, the spacecraft's transmitter is tested for frequency accuracy and stability, proper modulation index, and other parameters that could affect the reliability of the communications link. The actual spacecraft hardware is tested with actual ground station hardware. Even if the builder of the spacecraft says that their hardware meets all of the specifications, they may have missed problems that become obvious during proper pre-launch testing with the real hardware.
Fortune 500 corporations have been active participants in computer user groups, such as SHARE and DECUS, since the 1950s. That often includes contributing software to user group libraries.
The notion that every scrap of "intellectual property" is precious, and must be jealously guarded, is a moral sickness, like the often repeated dictum that a corporation's only responsibility is to maximize shareholder value.
Software Defined Radios (SDR) have a huge appetite for processor cycles. I use radio in the general sense, to include audio, visual and data transmission. Imagine plugging an antenna or cable into an ADC (analog to digital convertor) board on your PC. You could then run applications to listen to AM, FM or digital radio, watch analog or digital television, get the current time from GPS, receive IP packets from a wireless LAN or microwave link. Almost anything you now do with dedicated hardware could be replaced by software. The military is pushing the technology because it makes it possible to give a soldier one radio that can communicate with all of the existing legacy military and civilian radio systems, foreign and domestic.
The last person out the door is asked to stencil "Abandon In Place" on the building.
For its time, UCSD Pascal was an excellent language and operating system. Its main problems were price and politics, not performance or technical issues. Many people, including myself, wrote software for it. The speed penalty of the p-code interpreter was offset by the compactness of p-code, which was important on the memory-constrained PCs of the time. UCSD Pascal, like other alternative operating systems of the period, could not compete with MS-DOS and PC-DOS, which sold for well under $100, on price.
The U.S. Secret Service has Uzis.
Actually, it was their job. The flying clocks were used to check and adjust the atomic clocks and timing systems at remote locations. This kept all of the clocks in synchronization with a known margin of error. I don't know if they had to compensate for relativistic effects.
The scary thing is that the general population is even worse.
The algorithm's speed is supposed to be mainly dependent on the latency of main memory, not the CPU's cycle time. This means that there is much less of a gap between old and new hardware.
I can just imagine trying to explain it to security. Yes, it is an atomic clock. Yes, it is supposed to have all of those counting digits on the front panel. No, you can't take it apart to see how it works. No, I can't turn it off without making the whole trip pointless.
Another problem with liquid fuel rocket engines is making sure they will work after sitting idle many months in a very hostile environment. Fittings can leak, valves can leak or get stuck, propellants can freeze or deteriorate, moisture can cause corrosion or freeze into a plug inside a fuel line.
Parametric amps are still widely used in satellite ground stations. JPL's DSN (Deep Space Network) has even better toys, like hydrogen masers.
If you think you are too smart to be conned out of your money, you're wrong.
Later on I got a chance to use and program an RCA Spectra-70 in High School. The Spectra-70 was a poorly designed clone of an IBM mainframe. The school board had the computer, and each high school was given a teletype and a 110 baud modem. You could write programs in WATFOR (Waterloo FORTRAN), Dartmouth BASIC and RPG.
The first electronic computer that I actually owned was a TRS-80 Model 1 with 4K RAM, later upgraded to 16K RAM, and Extended BASIC.