I just had this image of Mr T reading ACAR (Australian Commodore and Amiga Review, of which I was the illustrious Assistant Editor, as if anyone cares).
Actually, he'd only rate as about my fourth most alarming fan. Without the jewellery, he wouldn't even make the top ten:-).
http://www.dansdata.com/p4.htm is my P4 review. Another pre-release processor, more pictures, much discussion of RDRAM and multiprocessing and the upcoming 0.13 micron versions and comparative performance and all that jazz.
My contribution to the fray: Damn, but the P4 sucked for distributed.net:-)!
Here in Australia, everything that's on free-to-air will also be digitally broadcast as of 01-01-2001 (we've only got five free-to-air channels, but then again we've also only got the population of New York City:-).
Digital and analogue simulcasting will persist for at least another eight years, and by then SDTV digital sets should be no more expensive than analogue ones are now, so nobody's too pressured to upgrade.
How much of that digital broadcasting will actually be HDTV and not SDTV, I don't know. But the broadcaster are required to squirt out some quantity of HDTV even from the start, so there'll be something for early adopters to drool over:-).
...which review was written by me, as it happens:-).
A couple of clarifications:
> just plug it into an IDE cable and tell Windows it's a removable disk drive and it's installed
...and you'll find it won't work at all, because the computer will freeze whenever you remove the card. You can't use a CompactFlash device in its IDE mode as a removable device; you're unplugging the CONTROLLER when you unplug the card, and the computer will have a conniption.
If you want hot swap, you need a card reader. <plug>I review a few recent ones here.</plug>
;
The CF-IDE, however, is excellent for no-moving-parts Linux boxes. 8Mb or 16Mb CF cards are pretty cheap, and you end up with a highly satisfactory poor man's solid state drive.
> your students can get cards in a range of capacities, from one or two megabytes to 500+.
The current range of CF card capacities is, to my knowledge, 8Mb (cheap, but not per megabyte) to 196Mb (stupidly expensive, but much cheaper per megabyte than the little cards). The fatter CF Type 2 cards hold more; the IBM MicroDrives are Type 2.
> Zip disks suck! They often lock up and won't read
Sez you:-P. In my experience, Zip disks treated with only a small amount of respect are the most reliable removable read/write devices I've seen. That doesn't make them bulletproof, and they will die in time, but for the money they're superb, if you ask me.
If students don't understand basic backup rules, though, no format will be adequate. They'll kill or lose the media, or they'll thork their own files and not have a copy, et cetera.
...I'd bet my left nut that it isn't. Forgive me if I'm being obtuse and the people here who are apparently taking it seriously really aren't.
Potato, lemon and other vegetable-electrolyte electrochemical cells are, even with big electrodes, only good for a few milliamps per cell. With the nail-sized electrodes shown here, one Cu/Zn electrode pair per spud, and six or seven spuds, they could manage 0.8V (barely) per cell, and 1mA on a very very good day indeed. Probably much less - "high-current" spud cells do it, I think, with many pairs of electrodes in close proximity.
Charitably, this setup could do 5.6V at 1mA, or 0.8V at 7mA, or intermediate values with series/parallel combinations. Any way you slice it, it's less than six milliwatts. Let's give 'em the benefit of the doubt and say 6mW is it.
You can light an LED with that much power. That's about all you can do. Running any sort of PC hardware - desktop or mobile - from 6mW is ridiculous. Wristwatch, yes. More than enough juice. 80386, no way in hell.
If the displayed device actually is the server you're connecting to (or not, depending on slashdotting...), then the "Power Converter/Regulator" is, one way or another, a regular power supply, and the spuds connect to nothing.
Ooooooh no they don't. Well, not in any way that's relevant for pretty much anyone's purposes.
I direct your attention here and here for a detailed explanation.
In brief, what most people call "memory effect" is really a combination of voltage depression resulting from the overcharge performed by all consumer battery chargers, and natural cell aging. Voltage depression does not greatly reduce cell capacity, but it does change the shape of the cell discharge curve - the cell's voltage drops abnormally early in the discharge cycle from the normal 1.2 volts to 1.05 volts or so, which may cause some devices to believe the cell is flat, because a normal NiCd IS very nearly flat when its terminal voltage has fallen this far. A voltage depresed cell, however, can actually deliver about the same amount of energy as it ordinarily would.
Genuine memory effect is very, VERY seldom seen, only occurs in sintered plate NiCd cells, and is in fact CURED by overcharging! Nickel metal hydride batteries are utterly immune to genuine memory effect, although they, too, can suffer from voltage depression.
After I wrote the (lengthy) comparison here, I bought a C-2500L. It's a proper TTL SLR (none of yer rangefinder viewfinder rubbish), it's got an excellent built-in flash and a hotshoe, it takes both kinds of popular memory card, image quality is superb, its macro mode is useful (though not as good as the Nikon Coolpix 950) and it's also got good battery life and a remote control.
You're still talking $US1300 for it, though, and it's got no USB or SCSI data transfer (serial only), so you'll need a Flash/SmartMedia card reader as well.
Howdy. I wrote the review (and submitted it to/., and had it declined:-).
> But it'd be neater to have a keyboard-adapter > -thingy, which you'd put between the cord and > the port, record the keystrokes.
The people who make the KeyGhost Security Keyboard also make a variety of other KeyGhosts, which I mention in the review. Their newest and cheapest product, not quite out now, is the KeyGhost Mini, which can look like a regular extension cable, or like a plug adapter.
> Or maybe it could broadcast them via radio... > anybody know of such a cool toy?
And I'm pretty sure the broadcast version is coming RSN.
> well-built sparkler bombs do not go FWOOM. They go BANG!!!
I challenge your use of the term "well-built". Any fool can make a bang-type bomb. Many fools do. If you want to be one of them, that's fine. Don't do it near me.
As I say at the bottom of my page: "Other enhancements, of the 'Hey! Let's build a can of fly spray into the middle of the bomb!' variety, are likely to result in natural selection."
"Hey! Let's tape the thing up like an Egyptian mummy!" falls solidly into this category of "enhancement", if you ask me.
Slashdot Mirror
I just had this image of Mr T reading ACAR (Australian Commodore and Amiga Review, of which I was the illustrious Assistant Editor, as if anyone cares).
Actually, he'd only rate as about my fourth most alarming fan. Without the jewellery, he wouldn't even make the top ten :-).
...is her e.
My contribution to the fray: Damn, but the P4 sucked for distributed.net :-)!
> So can it block out the picture of a guy's ass?
:-).
:-).
G'day. I wrote the review (and submitted it, and got it rejected, as per usual
You'll be pleased to know that I did indeed try the famous goatse.cx image, and yes, PORNsweeper blocked it!
I mention as much in the review, but I didn't actually explicitly mention, or link to, goatse.cx. Sorry
Here in Australia, everything that's on free-to-air will also be digitally broadcast as of 01-01-2001 (we've only got five free-to-air channels, but then again we've also only got the population of New York City :-).
Digital and analogue simulcasting will persist for at least another eight years, and by then SDTV digital sets should be no more expensive than analogue ones are now, so nobody's too pressured to upgrade.
How much of that digital broadcasting will actually be HDTV and not SDTV, I don't know. But the broadcaster are required to squirt out some quantity of HDTV even from the start, so there'll be something for early adopters to drool over :-).
Link, for anyone who cares: www.dba.org.au/Q&A/Alst on_DTV_Q&A.htm
A couple of clarifications:
> just plug it into an IDE cable and tell Windows it's a removable disk drive and it's installed
If you want hot swap, you need a card reader. <plug>I review a few recent ones here.</plug>
; The CF-IDE, however, is excellent for no-moving-parts Linux boxes. 8Mb or 16Mb CF cards are pretty cheap, and you end up with a highly satisfactory poor man's solid state drive.
> your students can get cards in a range of capacities, from one or two megabytes to 500+.
The current range of CF card capacities is, to my knowledge, 8Mb (cheap, but not per megabyte) to 196Mb (stupidly expensive, but much cheaper per megabyte than the little cards). The fatter CF Type 2 cards hold more; the IBM MicroDrives are Type 2.
> Zip disks suck! They often lock up and won't read
Sez you :-P. In my experience, Zip disks treated with only a small amount of respect are the most reliable removable read/write devices I've seen. That doesn't make them bulletproof, and they will die in time, but for the money they're superb, if you ask me.
If students don't understand basic backup rules, though, no format will be adequate. They'll kill or lose the media, or they'll thork their own files and not have a copy, et cetera.
Potato, lemon and other vegetable-electrolyte electrochemical cells are, even with big electrodes, only good for a few milliamps per cell. With the nail-sized electrodes shown here, one Cu/Zn electrode pair per spud, and six or seven spuds, they could manage 0.8V (barely) per cell, and 1mA on a very very good day indeed. Probably much less - "high-current" spud cells do it, I think, with many pairs of electrodes in close proximity.
Charitably, this setup could do 5.6V at 1mA, or 0.8V at 7mA, or intermediate values with series/parallel combinations. Any way you slice it, it's less than six milliwatts. Let's give 'em the benefit of the doubt and say 6mW is it.
You can light an LED with that much power. That's about all you can do. Running any sort of PC hardware - desktop or mobile - from 6mW is ridiculous. Wristwatch, yes. More than enough juice. 80386, no way in hell.
If the displayed device actually is the server you're connecting to (or not, depending on slashdotting...), then the "Power Converter/Regulator" is, one way or another, a regular power supply, and the spuds connect to nothing.
Ooooooh no they don't. Well, not in any way that's relevant for pretty much anyone's purposes.
I direct your attention here and here for a detailed explanation.
In brief, what most people call "memory effect" is really a combination of voltage depression resulting from the overcharge performed by all consumer battery chargers, and natural cell aging. Voltage depression does not greatly reduce cell capacity, but it does change the shape of the cell discharge curve - the cell's voltage drops abnormally early in the discharge cycle from the normal 1.2 volts to 1.05 volts or so, which may cause some devices to believe the cell is flat, because a normal NiCd IS very nearly flat when its terminal voltage has fallen this far. A voltage depresed cell, however, can actually deliver about the same amount of energy as it ordinarily would.
Genuine memory effect is very, VERY seldom seen, only occurs in sintered plate NiCd cells, and is in fact CURED by overcharging! Nickel metal hydride batteries are utterly immune to genuine memory effect, although they, too, can suffer from voltage depression.
Or, for that matter, here.
You're still talking $US1300 for it, though, and it's got no USB or SCSI data transfer (serial only), so you'll need a Flash/SmartMedia card reader as well.
That review, again :-), is here.
Of course, the Book PC may be small, but it's still much bigger than the Espresso. Way cheaper, though.
A Frontpage site.
Why am I not surprised?
> But it'd be neater to have a keyboard-adapter
> -thingy, which you'd put between the cord and
> the port, record the keystrokes.
The people who make the KeyGhost Security Keyboard also make a variety of other KeyGhosts, which I mention in the review. Their newest and cheapest product, not quite out now, is the KeyGhost Mini, which can look like a regular extension cable, or like a plug adapter.
> Or maybe it could broadcast them via radio...
> anybody know of such a cool toy?
And I'm pretty sure the broadcast version is coming RSN.
> well-built sparkler bombs do not go FWOOM. They go BANG!!!
I challenge your use of the term "well-built". Any fool can make a bang-type bomb. Many fools do. If you want to be one of them, that's fine. Don't do it near me.
As I say at the bottom of my page: "Other enhancements, of the 'Hey! Let's build a can of fly spray into the middle of the bomb!' variety, are likely to result in natural selection."
"Hey! Let's tape the thing up like an Egyptian mummy!" falls solidly into this category of "enhancement", if you ask me.