The Koenigsegg had a design flaw, so they fixed it and resubmitted it.
The Tesla performed without problems, but they made it look like the battery died unexpectedly. What's Tesla supposed to do? Put a bigger battery in and resubmit it so the show can complain that the extra weight makes it harder to push back to the garage?
will probably state exactly how they feel about it. Top Gear in particular won't hold anything back if they don't like a vehicle
They can talk about how they feel all they want, and they should mock the hell out of actual failings, but they shouldn't lie or mislead.
The judge is right, none of their words are lies. However, look at the theatrical presentation: After a short time on the track, they show the car decelerating, then being pushed back into the garage. No, they didn't say the battery died on them, but they started talking about the fact that it would go far less than it's rated mileage on the track (which is true; you don't expect your gas-powered car gets its EPA rated mileage on the track, do you?); then are shown pushing the car back to the garage; then go into a segment talking about how long it takes to recharge.
Outright lies? No, but it's misleading: the way it was presented certainly looks like the battery unexpectedly died in the middle of their tests, and somewhat suggests the 200-mile rated range is untrue. That's damaging to Tesla who's trying to build a reputation for building cars that perform better than promised (which they do, according to owners).
Actually, glossy doesn't improve the brightness at all. It improves contrast, by allowing deeper blacks. Matte gathers light from all angles and scatters it, making black areas slightly gray. Glossy screens reflect it without scattering. Most of the time that means it's reflected away from where you are, but when the light is behind you, you get a bright, sharp reflection which conceals information more than matte screens' even gray reflection.
Glossy is actually best used on desktops where you don't have windows or other bright light sources behind you. For laptops you definitely want matte if you're ever going to use it outdoors or while traveling anywhere that might have too much light.
It's not just the reels on top. The mechanical film path through the camera is also gone, which involves a lot of big metal parts.
Seriously, look at these things: http://www.red.com/products/epic... The body is 5 pounds. Another 5 pounds for a lens, and you have a cinematography camera in about 10 pounds.
Picked up a Panavision lately? The body alone weighs more than that. By the time you've strapped on a lens and a loaded reel, it's quite a load to lug.
Film resolution is limited by the grain size. It's about 3k grains across on 35mm. 1st-gen digital projection was 2k pixels across; the current standard is 4k; 8k may become popular if 3D stays in fashion.
The good: Film stock is expensive. Being able to play back what you just captured is invaluable. Reloading by slapping in a new hard drive saves downtime. Cutting the size and weight of the camera down by 70-90% gives you flexibility. Recording in any aspect ratio by just pressing a button is awfully convenient. Filming at high frame rates like it's nothing is damned cool. Digital projection in theaters and HD sets at home let you have an all-digital workflow.
Improving: Film has (had?) better dynamic range. Digital cameras are getting cheaper, but still more up front; still, you make it up pretty quickly.
The bad: Film has established reliable procedures for archiving. Data's still iffy.
So yeah, other than nostalgia for film grain, digital is the future. This isn't a surprise to anyone in the industry... A few years back digital gained solidly "good enough" picture quality at an attainable price, and everyone's switching as fast as they can get comfortable with the new toys. The technology just keeps getting better, so this isn't going to reverse.
I completely agree with that being a worthwhile thing to do, but what I really meant was whether it was if the present problem was big enough to be worth the investment of time. For this problem? Probably not. But if it was me, I'd do it anyway, because I enjoy doing and learning.
I think the easiest and most sustainable* setup is to simply get a bunch of deep cycle batteries and charge them from the mains. 1 human pedaling is maybe 50 watts if they're in average shape. 1 100 amp-hour 12-volt lead acid battery is 1200 watt-hours... Which is an entire 24-hour day's worth of pedaling.
They're set if someone can bring in a half-dozen batteries once a week by station wagon or hand dolly. But this isn't about practical. The bike is more fun and/or attention-getting.
* In any sense: I doubt they can sustain 24-7 pedaling forever, and if you want to talk in a hippie greengasmic eco-sustainable sense, frankly, the grid energy used to cook the extra food to power the people is probably a lot greater than just charging some batteries.
Bizarrely, the double conversion might be more efficient than a car charger. Car chargers are often just linear regulators, which means they're dropping 12v to 5v by dumping the difference to heat. They're only about 40% efficient.
An inverter is usually 80-90% efficient. AC switchmode power supplies (which is what USB wall-warts are) are 80-90% efficient. That's about 65-80% efficient, full-cycle. The inverter won't do well at low-load, but if they have a half-dozen wall warts on a plugstrip, they'll do better than your average car charger.
People recombining technologies to make a new thing isn't bad. From a philosophical standpoint, electrical engineers are doing the same thing - they're just recombining slightly lower-level technologies. Sure, a 12v-5v DC-DC converter will do better, but is it really worth the extra engineering effort when you already have the necessary higher-level components to build something that works?
I hope that one of their relatives gets away with arranging the murder of whoever set up the publicity site.
I really can't blame the guys behind the site. That's just panicked friends and family trying to fight a bureaucracy. I don't think they're doing the right thing, but their intentions are good enough, and I can certainly empathize.
If it goes wrong, blame the bureaucrat who prioritizes PR over the safety of the rescue crew.
OK, I have something that's been bugging me for a while.
Scientists discover things. Engineers develop things. Frequently someone can do both, but they're two different processes.
There's this terrible societal misconception that "scientist" means someone who works with technology. It leads to the mistrust of scientists because they're perceived as some ivory tower loonies who're lording technology over the populace.
Scientists are people who apply the scientific method to acquire knowledge. I don't expect CNN to get it, but please, let's at least try to get it right here.
1, There are are a whole lot of GPSes involved. It's a lot more than a nav unit on the bridge, and they don't all share a single off-switch.
2, You don't want to practice "OK, everyone turn off your GPS now and switch to plan B!". You want to practice "Why are we drifting to starboard? Is this an instrumentation failure? WTF is ERROR 7505?", because that's how it happens when you're doing it for real and you need to learn to work through that kind of confusion.
Some of Google's stockholders might take a longer-term view. Perhaps that's not the dominant effect in the market, but I reject the idea that any goal other than this quarter's profits is a violation of shareholders' trust.
Setting up several high-reliability, geographically-distributed, no-common-failure-modes sites is hard, and it's a prerequisite for DNS. If you mess up, pushing out new NS and glue records is slow. It takes a long time to recover, and your web site is down and your mail is bouncing the whole time.
Some large companies have multiple reliable sites and it's not a burden to host their own. Most mid-to-small guys are better off using at least an outsourced secondary DNS service. Tiny companies have better things to do than trying to host their own public infrastructure, and should outsource anything that's available as a cheap, convenient service like DNS.
One more tip - use lead-based solder. All modern components are rated for reflow with lead-free which melts at a much higher temperature. I think a major reason my cheesy technique works so well is the lead-based solder gives me a lot of extra safety margin.
Balloons aren't very useful if you're aiming for orbit, but for amateur rocketry where we're just trying to get something crazy-high and take a few pictures before a ballistic/chute reentry, it's likely a viable technique. This rocket achieved 37km from the ground. How high would it have gone if they'd launched from 30km and boosted the whole way with much lower air resistance? The balloon might limit you to a smaller rocket, but I'm certainly interested to find out what's possible!
I haven't had one fry yet! I'm probably going well outside the envelope specified on the data sheets, but those are pretty conservative, and the components can actually tolerate quite a bit more.
The biggest problem I have is somewhat uneven heating. One corner of the board reflows first and it usually takes 30-60 seconds between the first melt and the last one, and there's usually some wisps of smoke coming off the board by the time I'm done. The fix I've found is to turn off the heat when I know it's getting close, let the whole thing heat soak for a minute, then finish it... kind of a crude approximation of what's recommended on the data sheets.
I've done a couple dozen boards this way, and they've all worked, even when they were smoking and a little browned on the hottest corners! The failure rate would probably be terrible by production standards, but for my use it's surprisingly easy and effective.
Help Renee-Nicole Douceur get evaculated from Antarctica now! Raytheon and the NSF do not think a stroke is an emergency
My mother/aunt, Renee Douceur, is the winter site manager at the South Pole Station run by Raytheon and the National Science Foundation. She suffered a stroke on August 27th and the on-site doctors requested for her immediate medical emergency evacuation to get her to proper medical care and prevent further injury to her, The decision makers are disregarding the on-site doctors’ request for Renee’s immediate need for emergency evacuation. Instead they are treating her stroke as a non-emergency, keeping her at the South Pole until late October or early November. Renee’s attorney has advised her to go public because he is being stonewalled by Raytheon and the NSF to get her out ASAP for proper medical diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation (if she survives the trip out) Let's get her home!
You burn the recovery DVD from the recovery partition. If you blew it away, you can buy the physical media for a few bucks. The exact part number depends on the exact version and language you need: Linky.
... And I know this because Lenovo has the same part number lookup system that they inherited from IBM, so it only took me a minute to find. They're pretty good about documenting this stuff. If the tech support monkey couldn't find it you either couldn't express your request in English or you started shouting "fuck lenovo I'm buying a mac" on the phone and they gave up trying to help you.
I say all this as someone who's pretty familiar with the insides of ThinkPads, Latitudes, Evo N (HP/Compaq before the Probooks and Elitebooks), and MacBooks:
ThinkPads are still about as good as it comes for a solid corporate laptop. Aside from being sturdy, they're serviceable. Just as an example: when you need to fix something, get a copy of the Hardware Maintenance Manual, and you'll get detailed procedures on how to do it, and all the part numbers for replacements.
Have fun with that MacBook. Apple won't tell you how to open it. People make howtos and then don't label them with which exact models it applies to. When you eventually find one, good luck prying the stupid case open without damaging it... those clips are a bitch, you'll bend the trim, and it'll never go back together quite right. And you'll have to do that every time you want to change any part, be it the hard drive (not in a sled), the LCD (screws that can't be removed without unbolting the hinges from inside the main body), unjam the DVD (ah, slot-loaders), or repair the lid-latch.
Apple doesn't patronize their users.
Yeah... Keep telling yourself that while you're waiting at the Genius Bar after you've realized those things are too much of a pain to fix it yourself and you'd rather pay the temple a couple hundred bucks to do it for you.
Slashdot Mirror
The Koenigsegg had a design flaw, so they fixed it and resubmitted it.
The Tesla performed without problems, but they made it look like the battery died unexpectedly. What's Tesla supposed to do? Put a bigger battery in and resubmit it so the show can complain that the extra weight makes it harder to push back to the garage?
will probably state exactly how they feel about it. Top Gear in particular won't hold anything back if they don't like a vehicle
They can talk about how they feel all they want, and they should mock the hell out of actual failings, but they shouldn't lie or mislead.
The judge is right, none of their words are lies. However, look at the theatrical presentation: After a short time on the track, they show the car decelerating, then being pushed back into the garage. No, they didn't say the battery died on them, but they started talking about the fact that it would go far less than it's rated mileage on the track (which is true; you don't expect your gas-powered car gets its EPA rated mileage on the track, do you?); then are shown pushing the car back to the garage; then go into a segment talking about how long it takes to recharge.
Outright lies? No, but it's misleading: the way it was presented certainly looks like the battery unexpectedly died in the middle of their tests, and somewhat suggests the 200-mile rated range is untrue. That's damaging to Tesla who's trying to build a reputation for building cars that perform better than promised (which they do, according to owners).
Actually, glossy doesn't improve the brightness at all. It improves contrast, by allowing deeper blacks. Matte gathers light from all angles and scatters it, making black areas slightly gray. Glossy screens reflect it without scattering. Most of the time that means it's reflected away from where you are, but when the light is behind you, you get a bright, sharp reflection which conceals information more than matte screens' even gray reflection.
Glossy is actually best used on desktops where you don't have windows or other bright light sources behind you. For laptops you definitely want matte if you're ever going to use it outdoors or while traveling anywhere that might have too much light.
I've taken apart a couple and found nothing but a LM7805 and a couple caps. It runs hot as hell, but it puts out 500ma without melting.
But you're right, many of the better ones have at least a basic buck converter.
Can you extend this technique to cover the masters of every hollywood movie being shot? :)
It's all about what price archivists are willing to pay. I think it's workable, but it's not me establishing the procedures.
It's not just the reels on top. The mechanical film path through the camera is also gone, which involves a lot of big metal parts.
Seriously, look at these things: http://www.red.com/products/epic ... The body is 5 pounds. Another 5 pounds for a lens, and you have a cinematography camera in about 10 pounds.
Picked up a Panavision lately? The body alone weighs more than that. By the time you've strapped on a lens and a loaded reel, it's quite a load to lug.
Film resolution is limited by the grain size. It's about 3k grains across on 35mm. 1st-gen digital projection was 2k pixels across; the current standard is 4k; 8k may become popular if 3D stays in fashion.
The good: Film stock is expensive. Being able to play back what you just captured is invaluable. Reloading by slapping in a new hard drive saves downtime. Cutting the size and weight of the camera down by 70-90% gives you flexibility. Recording in any aspect ratio by just pressing a button is awfully convenient. Filming at high frame rates like it's nothing is damned cool. Digital projection in theaters and HD sets at home let you have an all-digital workflow.
Improving: Film has (had?) better dynamic range. Digital cameras are getting cheaper, but still more up front; still, you make it up pretty quickly.
The bad: Film has established reliable procedures for archiving. Data's still iffy.
So yeah, other than nostalgia for film grain, digital is the future. This isn't a surprise to anyone in the industry... A few years back digital gained solidly "good enough" picture quality at an attainable price, and everyone's switching as fast as they can get comfortable with the new toys. The technology just keeps getting better, so this isn't going to reverse.
I completely agree with that being a worthwhile thing to do, but what I really meant was whether it was if the present problem was big enough to be worth the investment of time. For this problem? Probably not. But if it was me, I'd do it anyway, because I enjoy doing and learning.
I think the easiest and most sustainable* setup is to simply get a bunch of deep cycle batteries and charge them from the mains. 1 human pedaling is maybe 50 watts if they're in average shape. 1 100 amp-hour 12-volt lead acid battery is 1200 watt-hours... Which is an entire 24-hour day's worth of pedaling.
They're set if someone can bring in a half-dozen batteries once a week by station wagon or hand dolly. But this isn't about practical. The bike is more fun and/or attention-getting.
* In any sense: I doubt they can sustain 24-7 pedaling forever, and if you want to talk in a hippie greengasmic eco-sustainable sense, frankly, the grid energy used to cook the extra food to power the people is probably a lot greater than just charging some batteries.
Bizarrely, the double conversion might be more efficient than a car charger. Car chargers are often just linear regulators, which means they're dropping 12v to 5v by dumping the difference to heat. They're only about 40% efficient.
An inverter is usually 80-90% efficient. AC switchmode power supplies (which is what USB wall-warts are) are 80-90% efficient. That's about 65-80% efficient, full-cycle. The inverter won't do well at low-load, but if they have a half-dozen wall warts on a plugstrip, they'll do better than your average car charger.
People recombining technologies to make a new thing isn't bad. From a philosophical standpoint, electrical engineers are doing the same thing - they're just recombining slightly lower-level technologies. Sure, a 12v-5v DC-DC converter will do better, but is it really worth the extra engineering effort when you already have the necessary higher-level components to build something that works?
I hope that one of their relatives gets away with arranging the murder of whoever set up the publicity site.
I really can't blame the guys behind the site. That's just panicked friends and family trying to fight a bureaucracy. I don't think they're doing the right thing, but their intentions are good enough, and I can certainly empathize.
If it goes wrong, blame the bureaucrat who prioritizes PR over the safety of the rescue crew.
Scientists have developed...
OK, I have something that's been bugging me for a while.
Scientists discover things. Engineers develop things. Frequently someone can do both, but they're two different processes.
There's this terrible societal misconception that "scientist" means someone who works with technology. It leads to the mistrust of scientists because they're perceived as some ivory tower loonies who're lording technology over the populace.
Scientists are people who apply the scientific method to acquire knowledge. I don't expect CNN to get it, but please, let's at least try to get it right here.
Look up a couple comments. :)
1, There are are a whole lot of GPSes involved. It's a lot more than a nav unit on the bridge, and they don't all share a single off-switch.
2, You don't want to practice "OK, everyone turn off your GPS now and switch to plan B!". You want to practice "Why are we drifting to starboard? Is this an instrumentation failure? WTF is ERROR 7505?", because that's how it happens when you're doing it for real and you need to learn to work through that kind of confusion.
Some of Google's stockholders might take a longer-term view. Perhaps that's not the dominant effect in the market, but I reject the idea that any goal other than this quarter's profits is a violation of shareholders' trust.
I'll drop the meme when they stop treating me like a product.
It's not to practice jamming... it's to practice operating when the Bad Guys are doing the jamming.
Setting up BIND is easy.
Setting up several high-reliability, geographically-distributed, no-common-failure-modes sites is hard, and it's a prerequisite for DNS. If you mess up, pushing out new NS and glue records is slow. It takes a long time to recover, and your web site is down and your mail is bouncing the whole time.
Some large companies have multiple reliable sites and it's not a burden to host their own. Most mid-to-small guys are better off using at least an outsourced secondary DNS service. Tiny companies have better things to do than trying to host their own public infrastructure, and should outsource anything that's available as a cheap, convenient service like DNS.
One more tip - use lead-based solder. All modern components are rated for reflow with lead-free which melts at a much higher temperature. I think a major reason my cheesy technique works so well is the lead-based solder gives me a lot of extra safety margin.
Let me know how it goes if you try it!
Balloons aren't very useful if you're aiming for orbit, but for amateur rocketry where we're just trying to get something crazy-high and take a few pictures before a ballistic/chute reentry, it's likely a viable technique. This rocket achieved 37km from the ground. How high would it have gone if they'd launched from 30km and boosted the whole way with much lower air resistance? The balloon might limit you to a smaller rocket, but I'm certainly interested to find out what's possible!
I haven't had one fry yet! I'm probably going well outside the envelope specified on the data sheets, but those are pretty conservative, and the components can actually tolerate quite a bit more.
The biggest problem I have is somewhat uneven heating. One corner of the board reflows first and it usually takes 30-60 seconds between the first melt and the last one, and there's usually some wisps of smoke coming off the board by the time I'm done. The fix I've found is to turn off the heat when I know it's getting close, let the whole thing heat soak for a minute, then finish it... kind of a crude approximation of what's recommended on the data sheets.
I've done a couple dozen boards this way, and they've all worked, even when they were smoking and a little browned on the hottest corners! The failure rate would probably be terrible by production standards, but for my use it's surprisingly easy and effective.
Source? None of that is on the petition:
Help Renee-Nicole Douceur get evaculated from Antarctica now! Raytheon and the NSF do not think a stroke is an emergency
My mother/aunt, Renee Douceur, is the winter site manager at the South Pole Station run by Raytheon and the National Science Foundation. She suffered a stroke on August 27th and the on-site doctors requested for her immediate medical emergency evacuation to get her to proper medical care and prevent further injury to her, The decision makers are disregarding the on-site doctors’ request for Renee’s immediate need for emergency evacuation. Instead they are treating her stroke as a non-emergency, keeping her at the South Pole until late October or early November. Renee’s attorney has advised her to go public because he is being stonewalled by Raytheon and the NSF to get her out ASAP for proper medical diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation (if she survives the trip out) Let's get her home!
You burn the recovery DVD from the recovery partition. If you blew it away, you can buy the physical media for a few bucks. The exact part number depends on the exact version and language you need: Linky.
I say all this as someone who's pretty familiar with the insides of ThinkPads, Latitudes, Evo N (HP/Compaq before the Probooks and Elitebooks), and MacBooks:
ThinkPads are still about as good as it comes for a solid corporate laptop. Aside from being sturdy, they're serviceable. Just as an example: when you need to fix something, get a copy of the Hardware Maintenance Manual, and you'll get detailed procedures on how to do it, and all the part numbers for replacements.
Have fun with that MacBook. Apple won't tell you how to open it. People make howtos and then don't label them with which exact models it applies to. When you eventually find one, good luck prying the stupid case open without damaging it... those clips are a bitch, you'll bend the trim, and it'll never go back together quite right. And you'll have to do that every time you want to change any part, be it the hard drive (not in a sled), the LCD (screws that can't be removed without unbolting the hinges from inside the main body), unjam the DVD (ah, slot-loaders), or repair the lid-latch.
Apple doesn't patronize their users.
Yeah... Keep telling yourself that while you're waiting at the Genius Bar after you've realized those things are too much of a pain to fix it yourself and you'd rather pay the temple a couple hundred bucks to do it for you.