Yes, a cellular phone can be an ignition source if it sparks, which it may do if you drop it, or if the battery's off it and touches keys in your pocket, or some similarly improbable thing happens. In normal use, cellphones don't spark.
In brief: They will work, but only for suitably small values of "work", because they'll only accept DVI-HDTV input. That's a subset of regular DVI that only supports a few scan rates. If you can't goose your video card into outputting the resolution and frequency combinations the screen wants, you're out of luck.
I am shocked, horrified, and revolted beyond human comprehension.
But only by the fact that Samsung have never sent me any such thing.
Dammit, I got into this business for the corruption. But do I get over-spec high-dollar hardware, automobiles or prostitutes? No, I do not. It's a bloody swindle, I tell you.
Look, Samsung. 20 inch diagonal, 1600 by 1200, 700:1 contrast ratio, 16ms response time. Is that too much to ask?
Delivery address provided on application. Favourable review guaranteed.
There's a recent book called "Shooting Digital" that you might find helpful; it pretty much starts from the basics, but contains practical advice for all sorts of photographic situations. I reviewed it the other day, here.
Re:Conflict of interest, not that users are confus
on
Zero Blaster Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
> This however, was entirely a product suck-up....complete with the linkage
I'll admit that I deliberately submitted it that way in hopes of getting it posted (and it worked!). But in the review, I do mention that I bought my review Zero Blaster on eBay, cheaper than ThinkGeek sell it:-).
> if you look at picture data it doesn't have one red pixel value, two green, and a blue. it has one of each.
That's because it's been interpolated from a RGBG (or whatever) matrix of original colour-filtered pixel values. Only Foveon have made a true per-pixel RGB single-chip sensor, and it's only available in one rather weird camera so far; every other current single-sensor camera uses filtered pixels, which is why their RAW format output is different from their TIFF format. RAW preserves the original pixel values, without interpolating the colour from surrounding pixels.
That said, the filtered pixels do not give you a cleanly arithmetically reduced resolution. They give reduced chrominance resolution, and some reduction in luminance resolution as well that's determined by the image and the filter colours and pattern. If you're shooting an all-red or all-blue scene with an RGBG-filtered camera, you'll get one-quarter resolution. If you're shooting an all-green scene, you'll get half resolution. If you're shooting a normal scene, you'll get something approaching the resolution you'd expect from the raw pixel number.
The subject matter and photographic situation may make it impossible to capture a full resolution image anyway, mind you. My slightly old EOS D60 review here has more to say about effective resolutions and what they mean.
I didn't link to anything about the recent University of Birmingham press release in the column I put up the other day about fuel cells and related technologies. The reason why I didn't is that their press release doesn't make a lot of sense, and there's nothing more substantial on their site or in the video. This piece is better, but not much better, at least for the microengine-instead-of-battery applications to which people keep saying their developments apply.
"These micro-engines have over 300 times more energy than an ordinary battery" is meaningless. If they mean total energy delivery over whatever time period you like, then microengines can beat batteries by a factor of a million trillion zillion, as long as you hook them up to a big enough fuel tank. In actual power capacity, though, microengines aren't anything special at all, yet.
The aim is little turbines the size of a sugar cube that run from butane or propane or whatever, and have several watts of output power; prototypes of such things have been spinning for a while now. The microengines shown in the U of B release, though, are minuscule piston units which have power output in the microwatts, if that. Heck, the ones shown in the release don't even have generators attached to them, so their electrical output at the moment is zero!
For your amusement: A reader also pointed this out to me; it's a reprint of a piece on the subject from the British "Sun" tabloid, and it reads as if they took the U of B press release and put it through a Markov chain program, or something.
It's good to know that alcoholism in the press is alive and well.
I checked out the (somewhat more practical, and higher resolution) SyncMaster 172T the other day. The review's here. Among a large number of other things, I actually had a go at measuring the contrast ratio.
I'd like to take this opportunity to mention that wondermagnet.com are nice people, who sent me some magnets to play with a while ago, which I wrote about here.
They've also got a whole alternative energy site, featuring amusing things like rustic wooden wind generators, here.
...who's had a starring role a few times on The Textbook League's site. The Textbook League's basic purpose is to point out the large number of textbooks that say things that aren't, you know, true.
The operator of the League site, Bill Bennetta, posted on the Skeptic list today on this subject. He said he was interviewed for the Washington Post piece, and gave the journo various straightforward examples of Hakim's deception in her previous books. This got edited down to "Even amid all the acclaim, one textbook group accused Hakim of writing in errors."
Actually, the League didn't "accuse" her of anything; they darn well proved it, so far as I can see. But who's ever going to be able to check for themselves, while the League is anonymised as "one textbook group"?
Well, here are the references the Post doesn't want you to see. Check 'em out here, here and here (a search reveals a few more, too).
Basically, Hakim gets stuff wrong, and just loves calling her own religious beliefs "history". Other people's don't get the same treatment.
Maybe she'll be just great at inspiring kids with the majesty and humanity of the scientific endeavour, tra la. Her past work doesn't bode well, though.
People who don't care about their lamps having an IP address, and just want a hoopy colour-changing battery powered LED light thing, may be interested in the ones I reviewed (along with a variety of other LED lights) a while ago. There are a few products like this around now, but these ones are tough, and you turn them on and off by shaking them:-).
Indeed they are, which is a bit of a bummer if someone manages to fake both of your irises. Then, you have to use whatever backup authentication method is provided. With any luck, you'll still be able to use a PIN, or whatever.
I had a bit of a rant on this subject when I reviewed, and successfully faked out, a fingerprint scanner a while ago.
The big deal is the use of multiple images and intelligent image processing (as distinct from the image processing that's favoured by the kind of people who see alien choirs on roofs and "rods" all over the place...) to turn a sequence of low-res, low-dynamic-range images into a quite spectacular final image, which simply couldn't have been captured with any single-exposure imaging system connected to the same optics, or even to a much more expensive telescope.
People who find this subject intriguing should check out AstroStack.
> This things does 53 watts RMS per channel, and 200 watts RMS on the sub.
Oooh no they don't:-).
In my review of the Z-560 set, and some other speakers, I have a look inside and discover that Logitech's wattage numbers appear to be seriously inflated. Oh, and that "THX certification" doesn't mean diddly, either:-).
Slashdot Mirror
References from The Source Of All (Or At Least Most) Wisdom:
Fuelish Pleasures
Static Quo
I talk about this in one of my letters columns.
In brief: They will work, but only for suitably small values of "work", because they'll only accept DVI-HDTV input. That's a subset of regular DVI that only supports a few scan rates. If you can't goose your video card into outputting the resolution and frequency combinations the screen wants, you're out of luck.
And this, while I'm at it.
But only by the fact that Samsung have never sent me any such thing.
Dammit, I got into this business for the corruption. But do I get over-spec high-dollar hardware, automobiles or prostitutes? No, I do not. It's a bloody swindle, I tell you.
Look, Samsung. 20 inch diagonal, 1600 by 1200, 700:1 contrast ratio, 16ms response time. Is that too much to ask?
Delivery address provided on application. Favourable review guaranteed.
Look, I've been busy today, OK :-)?
There's a recent book called "Shooting Digital" that you might find helpful; it pretty much starts from the basics, but contains practical advice for all sorts of photographic situations. I reviewed it the other day, here.
...which gives me an excuse to add yet another link to my site to this thread, because I reviewed the Airzooka the other day :-).
My take on this idea, in the unlikely event that anyone cares, is here.
Word.
I'll admit that I deliberately submitted it that way in hopes of getting it posted (and it worked!). But in the review, I do mention that I bought my review Zero Blaster on eBay, cheaper than ThinkGeek sell it :-).
That's because it's been interpolated from a RGBG (or whatever) matrix of original colour-filtered pixel values. Only Foveon have made a true per-pixel RGB single-chip sensor, and it's only available in one rather weird camera so far; every other current single-sensor camera uses filtered pixels, which is why their RAW format output is different from their TIFF format. RAW preserves the original pixel values, without interpolating the colour from surrounding pixels.
That said, the filtered pixels do not give you a cleanly arithmetically reduced resolution. They give reduced chrominance resolution, and some reduction in luminance resolution as well that's determined by the image and the filter colours and pattern. If you're shooting an all-red or all-blue scene with an RGBG-filtered camera, you'll get one-quarter resolution. If you're shooting an all-green scene, you'll get half resolution. If you're shooting a normal scene, you'll get something approaching the resolution you'd expect from the raw pixel number.
The subject matter and photographic situation may make it impossible to capture a full resolution image anyway, mind you. My slightly old EOS D60 review here has more to say about effective resolutions and what they mean.
Someone's already linked to one of my pieces about batteries, so I need only pimp Dan's Quick Guide to Memory Effect, You Idiots :-).
Review one. Review two.
Read it while you wait for Viperlair's server to un-Slashdot itself :-).
"These micro-engines have over 300 times more energy than an ordinary battery" is meaningless. If they mean total energy delivery over whatever time period you like, then microengines can beat batteries by a factor of a million trillion zillion, as long as you hook them up to a big enough fuel tank. In actual power capacity, though, microengines aren't anything special at all, yet.
The aim is little turbines the size of a sugar cube that run from butane or propane or whatever, and have several watts of output power; prototypes of such things have been spinning for a while now. The microengines shown in the U of B release, though, are minuscule piston units which have power output in the microwatts, if that. Heck, the ones shown in the release don't even have generators attached to them, so their electrical output at the moment is zero!
For your amusement: A reader also pointed this out to me; it's a reprint of a piece on the subject from the British "Sun" tabloid, and it reads as if they took the U of B press release and put it through a Markov chain program, or something.
It's good to know that alcoholism in the press is alive and well.
I checked out the (somewhat more practical, and higher resolution) SyncMaster 172T the other day. The review's here. Among a large number of other things, I actually had a go at measuring the contrast ratio.
They've also got a whole alternative energy site, featuring amusing things like rustic wooden wind generators, here.
This incredible object is worth a look, too.
Specifically, you can find my LED flashlight reviews (newest first) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here :-).
The operator of the League site, Bill Bennetta, posted on the Skeptic list today on this subject. He said he was interviewed for the Washington Post piece, and gave the journo various straightforward examples of Hakim's deception in her previous books. This got edited down to "Even amid all the acclaim, one textbook group accused Hakim of writing in errors."
Actually, the League didn't "accuse" her of anything; they darn well proved it, so far as I can see. But who's ever going to be able to check for themselves, while the League is anonymised as "one textbook group"?
Well, here are the references the Post doesn't want you to see. Check 'em out here, here and here (a search reveals a few more, too).
Basically, Hakim gets stuff wrong, and just loves calling her own religious beliefs "history". Other people's don't get the same treatment.
Maybe she'll be just great at inspiring kids with the majesty and humanity of the scientific endeavour, tra la. Her past work doesn't bode well, though.
People who don't care about their lamps having an IP address, and just want a hoopy colour-changing battery powered LED light thing, may be interested in the ones I reviewed (along with a variety of other LED lights) a while ago. There are a few products like this around now, but these ones are tough, and you turn them on and off by shaking them :-).
Indeed they are, which is a bit of a bummer if someone manages to fake both of your irises. Then, you have to use whatever backup authentication method is provided. With any luck, you'll still be able to use a PIN, or whatever.
I had a bit of a rant on this subject when I reviewed, and successfully faked out, a fingerprint scanner a while ago.
People who find this subject intriguing should check out AstroStack.
AOpen H500W and A340, Chyang Fun CF-2029B, and FastWin FW-168A
Codegen ATX-6061 and ATX-6063 (they look expensive, but they aren't)
Lian Li PC-6087, PC-6089 and PC-6099 (Lian Li's versions of Cooler Master's swing-front boxes)
People who'd like to see what a representative mini-car actually has in it, by the way, might like to check out my review of one, here.
Oooh no they don't :-).
In my review of the Z-560 set, and some other speakers, I have a look inside and discover that Logitech's wattage numbers appear to be seriously inflated. Oh, and that "THX certification" doesn't mean diddly, either :-).