I wrote a classic fake DOS prompt in quickbasic once, and installed it on a dim-witted colleage's computer at work.
It worked exactly as you would expect except for the fact that the 'm' and 'n' keys were reversed. To make things even more confusing, I prised the 'm' and 'n' key caps off the keyboard, and replaced them in the wrong positions, so that the keys would appear to generate the correct character.
The poor guy could never figure out why he kept typing 'wim' to start windows.
On a related note, if you have two CCDs, one 5MP, and the other 8MP, both 11mm diagonal, the 8MP one doesn't necessarily look much better;)
Actually, the 5MP one might look better, since the pixels will be larger, and therefore able to capture more light. ie. The signal to noise ratio will be better for a given 'shutter' speed.
To put it another way, if you work minimum wage at Burger King and you download $200,000 worth of music, have you really deprived the music industry of $200,000? No. That's why I find the numbers they spread around about the cost of "piracy" to be misleading.
You might indeed deprive the music industry of $200,000 if you then make these downloaded files available for many many others to steal. It's not the downloaders that's the problem, but the sharers!
Jeff
The 'bi-planes' game on the triple action cartridge rocks!
Me and my mate would have hours of fun on that one. You could pull some groovy stunts like stalling the plane, then flipping over backward and then end up flying the plane backwards.
only a complete moron would put the timing belt on to drive an alternator or water pump
Plenty of car engines use the timing belt to drive the water pump. For example Ford CVH and Zetec, Vauxhall J series. It is a bit dodgy because it is not unknown for water pumps to seize up and strip off the belt teeth.
It got 1500bps with a simple frequency modulated scheme on a normal cassette. Games makers would often use what they called 'flash loaders' - the first bit on the tape being a small loader program, which sped the tape read speed up to in some cases a whopping 2400bps!
Yeah, the speccy tape interface was faster and more reliable than most at that time
Do you remember a plug in module called the Specmate? It had a button that triggered an NMI and dumped the entire ram contents to tape at an unbelievable speed (excellent for copying games) - it near enough sounded just like white noise. A whole 48K's worth only took about 2 minutes. Mind you, it was fun trying to load it back on anything other than the original tape recorder that made the recording.
It would seem like an FPGA, with its gates programmed for optimum efficiency for a given task, should be able to kick the pants off a traditional fixed architecture cpu. If this isn't the case, can someone tell me why?
FPGAs are slower than ASICs, due in part to the programmable switches used to wire up your design. FPGAs are also many times less dense than a ASIC, again due to the general purpose building blocks, and programmable switches.
Basically, they're bigger, slower and more expensive than an ASIC
On the second board I was most impressed with the software tools hardware guys used. NOT! Although the board was more or less up and running I found a couple of places where transmits were connected to transmits and receives to receives. I asked why the schematic capture tools didn't catch such obvious mistakes. I know the software can, but quite honestly, all the software used for hardware design feels like it was written by, uh, hardware guys.:-O
I'm a hardware engineer, and I have to agree somewhat about hardware EDA tools. They do suck much more than SW design tools.
'Compiling' (i.e. synthesising, layout, drc etc) of a hardware ASIC design is much more hands on and time consuming that compiling software (ie. type 'make'), and I guess that's why hardware design tools seem to be much more primitive.
And on top of all that, hardware is expected to work after the first full compile (i.e. taping out a chip).
Take two large steel bolts, about 4-5" long, both the same size, and a nut that will fit them. Screw the nut onto one of the bolts, but only about 1-2 threads. Put some match heads in the hole in the nut, and then screw in the other bolt (not too tight!!!!). Basically, you now have two bolts joined together with a single nut, and with match heads between them. Finally, throw it up in the air and run like hell!
Back when I was a kid, we used to make carbide rockets. You take a 2 litre plastic coke bottle, chuck a small lump of calcium carbide in the bottom, and a dash of water. Then you'd leave the cap off, lie the bottle on it's side on the ground and wait a few seconds for the acetalyne gas to build up. Finally, hold a match near the open mouth of the bottle and whooosh! Off it would roar down the garden spraying flame and mucky water out the back.
This method might tell you about the jitter and latency right now, but it offers no guarantees that the connection will stay that way (I can't see how any method can). If someone starts a bit download or a digger goes through a cable you're screwed! (or rather the patient is)
Now the SegWay supposedly uses, "aircraft quality gyroscopes" for balance and control. If these are powerful enough to keep an adult human upright they must be spinning at a terrific RPM. What are the dangers involved in this? That is to say if someone on one of these were to be struck by a car, would one of these gyros take off and remove some unfortunate soul's head?
The gyroscopes do not contain rotating masses in the conventional sense. They are solid state "vibrating ring" gyros that use the coriolis effect to measure rotational speed (from here). Its the powerful motors that keep the balance, not the mass in the gyroscopes, they are simply the sensors.
Jeff
200 mph? In their dreams!
on
Landshark
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· Score: 2, Informative
Jesus, the fastest and biggest motorbikes cant reach 200mph, yet this thing can carry three people, and could have as small as a 400cc engine (according to the article). Don't think so somehow!
Also, all those people saying 3 wheels are unstable at speed should have a look at Thrust SSC. OK, it had four wheels but the rear two were very close together like a trike, and also steered.
On the contrary, my dear Watson. What if I change something in my Word document, but later on decides it was no good and wish to discard it? Nope, sorry. My old document is already rewritten with no turning back. Or is he suggesting that everyone should always make a copy of a document before editing it, just in case? Wouldn't THAT seem terrible unintuitive?
Well maybe the word processor could automatically save all your work rather than the end result of all your work. By that I mean the saved file could contain information about everything you did to that file, so you could go back to any point in its past.
Slashdot Mirror
It worked exactly as you would expect except for the fact that the 'm' and 'n' keys were reversed. To make things even more confusing, I prised the 'm' and 'n' key caps off the keyboard, and replaced them in the wrong positions, so that the keys would appear to generate the correct character.
The poor guy could never figure out why he kept typing 'wim' to start windows.
Actually, the 5MP one might look better, since the pixels will be larger, and therefore able to capture more light. ie. The signal to noise ratio will be better for a given 'shutter' speed.
Jeff
I thought it was pronounced 'jibs', since I thought 'gibs' was short for 'giblets'.
To put it another way, if you work minimum wage at Burger King and you download $200,000 worth of music, have you really deprived the music industry of $200,000? No. That's why I find the numbers they spread around about the cost of "piracy" to be misleading.
You might indeed deprive the music industry of $200,000 if you then make these downloaded files available for many many others to steal. It's not the downloaders that's the problem, but the sharers!
Jeff
I used to test 9v PP3 (not PPC) batteries for freshness by putting my tongue accross the contacts. New ones would certainly make you wince!
Jeff
Um, we've landed stuff on Venus and an asteroid called Eros
Jeff
The 'bi-planes' game on the triple action cartridge rocks!
Me and my mate would have hours of fun on that one. You could pull some groovy stunts like stalling the plane, then flipping over backward and then end up flying the plane backwards.
Jeff
Plenty of car engines use the timing belt to drive the water pump. For example Ford CVH and Zetec, Vauxhall J series. It is a bit dodgy because it is not unknown for water pumps to seize up and strip off the belt teeth.
Jeff
Ever thought that they might be designed to run at over 130F? Did running at 130F cause you any problems?
Jeff
http:\\www.howstuffworks.com
Jeff
1) I like the music, and I am willing to pay for it. The RIAA gets $15. The RIAA is happy.
2) I don't like the music, but I'm not willing to pay for it. I don't download it. The RIAA does not have $15, the RIAA is sad.
3) I like the music, but I'm not willing to pay for it. I download it. The RIAA does not have $15, the RIAA is sad.
Conveniently for your argument, you left out the fourth option:
4) I like the music, I'm willing to pay for it, but instead I download it because I can. The RIAA does not have $15, the RIAA is sad.
In this case, the act of downloading the music for free does harm the RIAA.
Jeff
Yeah, the speccy tape interface was faster and more reliable than most at that time
Do you remember a plug in module called the Specmate? It had a button that triggered an NMI and dumped the entire ram contents to tape at an unbelievable speed (excellent for copying games) - it near enough sounded just like white noise. A whole 48K's worth only took about 2 minutes. Mind you, it was fun trying to load it back on anything other than the original tape recorder that made the recording.
Jeff
For starters, how about the branching structure of the airways in your lungs?
Jeff
Certainly, Modelsim
Jeff
FPGAs are slower than ASICs, due in part to the programmable switches used to wire up your design. FPGAs are also many times less dense than a ASIC, again due to the general purpose building blocks, and programmable switches.
Basically, they're bigger, slower and more expensive than an ASIC
Jeff
I'm a hardware engineer, and I have to agree somewhat about hardware EDA tools. They do suck much more than SW design tools.
'Compiling' (i.e. synthesising, layout, drc etc) of a hardware ASIC design is much more hands on and time consuming that compiling software (ie. type 'make'), and I guess that's why hardware design tools seem to be much more primitive.
And on top of all that, hardware is expected to work after the first full compile (i.e. taping out a chip).
Jeff
Take dev/random and pipe it to output file.
Guaranteed unbreakable encryption!
But I can just hack your box and read from
Maybe if you used
Jeff
Take two large steel bolts, about 4-5" long, both the same size, and a nut that will fit them. Screw the nut onto one of the bolts, but only about 1-2 threads. Put some match heads in the hole in the nut, and then screw in the other bolt (not too tight!!!!). Basically, you now have two bolts joined together with a single nut, and with match heads between them. Finally, throw it up in the air and run like hell!
Jeff
Back when I was a kid, we used to make carbide rockets. You take a 2 litre plastic coke bottle, chuck a small lump of calcium carbide in the bottom, and a dash of water. Then you'd leave the cap off, lie the bottle on it's side on the ground and wait a few seconds for the acetalyne gas to build up. Finally, hold a match near the open mouth of the bottle and whooosh! Off it would roar down the garden spraying flame and mucky water out the back.
Jeff
Jeff
Jeff
Jeff
The gyroscopes do not contain rotating masses in the conventional sense. They are solid state "vibrating ring" gyros that use the coriolis effect to measure rotational speed (from here). Its the powerful motors that keep the balance, not the mass in the gyroscopes, they are simply the sensors.
Jeff
Also, all those people saying 3 wheels are unstable at speed should have a look at Thrust SSC. OK, it had four wheels but the rear two were very close together like a trike, and also steered.
Well maybe the word processor could automatically save all your work rather than the end result of all your work. By that I mean the saved file could contain information about everything you did to that file, so you could go back to any point in its past.
Jeff