This was more of a big deal when I spent a lot of time in the machine room, but it was also useful when I was tired and easily distracted -- a 100 count box of Moldex Pura-Fit 6800 ear plugs. A single box would last me about a year.
When purchased in bulk, foam ear plugs are reasonably affordable. NoiseBuster headphones are helpful, too, for cutting down machine noise -- but the earplugs are best.
I find myself tiring easily when constantly exposed to machine noise from loud PC's, routers, etc.
> but more like the kind of engineer that runs a steam engine
*shudder* that's a scary thought -- a bunch of ConRail train drivers at the controls of a nuclear reactor.
The reality has already been said by others -- Sub drivers go through more physics and engineering training than most of us "computer engineers" go through at school.
No joke - when a friend visited some distant relatives of his wife and identified himself as an engineer, they asked him which train company he worked for.
Very loosely speaking, I see the triad of 802.11, 802.11b, and 802.11a as being like the triad of Ethernet, FastEthernet, and GigabitEthernet.
There was once a time when everyone had Ethernet, and all was good, if a tad bit slow.
When FastEthernet came out, there was some initial hand wringing, but pretty much everyone has moved to FastEthernet and declared it The Standard. Since it was the prevailiing technology at the time that computers with integrated networking were starting to come out in droves, FastEthernet has achieved critical mass.
Now, Gigabit Ethernet is out, but no average home user will ever see it in his computer. He's not likely going to need that high performance, and is certainly not willing to pay for it. It's a specialty application product.
Similarly, the older 802.11 wireless cards (2 MBit) was a good thing at the time they came out; but they were still a bit too slow.
When 802.11b came out, the performance reached a good level for the most common wireless use. And the price is pretty darned good. And since most laptops with integrated wireless come with 802.11b, it is achieving (has achieved?) critical mass. (Or is that critical mess?)
Although 802.11a is now available, they are too expensive and have not yet achieved the interoperability track record of 802.11b. And, besides, if you have a portable wireless network application, you probably don't need the higher speed. Really now, when was the last time you compiled your kernel over wireless? Or streamed video from a server to watch it on your laptop while you're seated at your comfy couch?
The world got along fine with Plain Old Telephone Service for a 100 years.
Now, wired FastEthernet, and wireless 802.11b is the "pretty good and cheap" solution for the masses.
Well, as others have already mentioned, new components will likely out gas during the initial operating period. There's various new rubbber and plastic parts, and there may be some pastes (like under the heatsink) and adhesives that will also release the "new car smell" from your computer.
The important thing is to recognize the normal out gassing from something that's burning. If the smell tastes burnt, investigate the smell right away. If you see any sooty deposits (especially the black kinds), things have overheated to a dangerous level.
Perhaps your manufacturer has not burned in your new machine as long as what had been the norm. Computer manufacturers used to talk about having "72 hours of burn in" or "5 days of burn in". So, maybe you're on the earlier part of the curve in amount of smell being released.
Dang. It might be a virtual gesture, but there's around 100 characters in that screen shot. Each one represents a real person -- that's 100 real people moved enough to logon and gather for the ceremony.
Yeah, I agree wholehartedly with your concern. I once purchased a generic "book PC" because I thought it was perfect for my crowded desk.
But the damned thing was so loud that I couldn't stand it . Many "white box" generic PC's are awful in this regard.
I later bought some HP e-PC's which turned out to be a lot quieter; in part because HP moved the power supply outside to a power brick.
This Lex Thin-800E PC also uses an external power supply. Good. The CPU fan should be reasonably quiet under normal circumstances, provided they used a good quality (i.e., not the cheapest) fan.
BTW, The PCI riser is a nice touch. The HP e-PC does not have one.
You must have a really good reason for wanting to do this. If it's just for kicks, I say forget it. It'll be a very expensive pointless hobby.
By the time you sourced the parts, made the circuit board, and did the mechanical work to make the docking possible, you've spent far more than you would pay for the docking station.
Just buy a used docking station. You can even get aftermarket "USB docking stations" (if they suit your needs).
BTW, if your intent was to have custom IO ports for your laptop, you can get USB-based IO port/DAQ devices. Not terribly cheap, but easier.
Re:You're behind a hub? You ain't got a T1.
on
How to Test Your T1?
·
· Score: 2
Aaargh. Serves me right for being lazy in my explanation...
What I was getting at is that if you just take a default configuration of your networking, and try to do bandwidth measurements with a remote "bandwidth tester" over a "public" network that has all sorts of hops between you and the test-server, you're likely to get not-so-good performance, and that 900Kbps is not a terribly bad number. As I said before, it depends partly on what doodads might be between the testing PC and the server (inclusive of the equipment on both ends). Poorly configured client PC's over a high-latency network can take a 1.5 Mbps connection and make it look like 400 Kbps...
You can, of course, run a test on a quiet and private network, with all the networking parameters tuned to optimal to get full utilization of your bandwidth.
Re:You're behind a hub? You ain't got a T1.
on
How to Test Your T1?
·
· Score: 2
Guilty as charged. But with an explanation... I was just assuming he's been getting his 900kbps with remote bandwidth testers (located who knows where) on "untweaked" PC's.
You're behind a hub? You ain't got a T1.
on
How to Test Your T1?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
We've gotten 300-900 Kbps. Each site has disclaimers as to internet traffic, time of day, etc. Furthermore, we split the T1 out over a hub with two other tenants in the building. I'm coming through from behind that hub.
Ahem. From this, it looks like you're really just buying Internet access with a "T1" rate. 900kbps is almost as good as you're going to get on a T1. Maybe upto 1.1Mbps or so, tops. You have to allow for protocol overhead, latency of all equipment between you and the "other side", and congestion that may or may not exist.
Getting a T1 or getting a "T1"?
on
How to Test Your T1?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
If you're getting T1 service, it should be possible to borrow a CSU/DSU, put it in remote-loopback, and make sure you have a full T1 of bandwidth. Or, if you own the router, you can just look at the statistics...
If you're talking about getting ISP service with "T1" equivalent bandwidth, that's a different story. You wouldn't be able to tell if the guy has "oversubscribed" you unless you find other buyers of the sevice and generate enough traffic to load down the DS-3.
To prevent getting burned, make sure your SLA clearly states the bandwidth you are expecting, and the means by which that is measured.
Well, AFAIK, lot of the DVD players sold in stores in the Chinese community are not region-locked and many of them don't honor the various restriction controls. This is because they want to be able to watch imported videos. And, if you like Karaoke, these stores have plenty of Karaoke-enabled models, too!
If people are going to compare computers to cars, they shouldn't complain about how hard it can be to fix them (ie. Oil Change, Tire Change, Rotation.. and WHY those things need to be done), no matter what OS they're running.
Well, I agree that cars don't translate well to operating systems; but I think the "gearheads" versus "commuter" mentality exists as "tech-heads" and "users".
GM and Ford makes cars for the mass market by making the car fairly uncomplicated (to the driver). And servicing the vehicle is easy because everybody carries parts and know how to repair them.
I think Linux is more like a limited-production car that require the owners to know much more intimate details about the car; and when something breaks, you can't just order it from NAPA. You have to rebuild the part (either from scratch, following a plan, or using pieces with some assembly required).
As a "daily driver", I like my Windows desktop. It let's me interoperate effectively with the world.
But I sure like to tinker with my ultra-modded performance car.
Do you have a link/biblio-reference to the info about the Russians buying the pinball machines?
One of my favorite Russian-CS-is-screwed is the story about the metric chips... This Byte article alludes to the original story... In short, the Russians stole western-technology and produced knock-off copies using "the metric inch" -- except when their poor-quality copied failed, they couldn't use real (stolen?) chips to repair their machines.
*assuming* that this technique ultimately becomes stable and useable in a home microwave (safety, cost, repeatability, yada yada), this would open up wonderful avenues -- imagine making your own jewelry and robotics parts without building a blast furnace!
I bet there could also be plastics that would be compatible with this process. Excellent for product prototyping.
The reality, though, is that it'll never be commercialized to the extent of becoming a hobbyist kit. Too bad.
Yeah. It sounded reasonable, except for the obvious heavy lawyer tone.
But, man, the letter sure looked fake. The guy says it is the actual letter; but the text and letter head graphics are too perfectly aligned (on crinkled paper, no less) to be a real scan.
At one time, there were two groups developing maglev systems in Japan. The government sponsored maglev which primarily relied on magnetic repulsion to levitate the train, and a private group (Japan airline I think was a cosponsor) using magnetic attraction.
I got to sit on a short test-track version of the latter system in Japan. I think around 1986 (there was a World's Fair IIRC).
It was the most incredible mass-transit experience in my life. The thing accelerated faster than a 747 at takeoff. And there was absolutely no sound or vibration. It was almost as if gravity suddenly went sideways as you were pressed against (or pulled away from, depending on your seating orientation) your seat.
Gawd, I sure hope a Maglev goes in between Los Angeles and Las Vegas and/or San Francisco. There used to be constant talk about it during the 80's and early 90's. Though not much these days...
Stacked memory devices? You mean like the ones Irvine Sensors have been making for 20 years?
To their credit, Matrix Semiconductors acknowledges that they weren't the first ones to do this; but rather that they (supposedly) are the first to have mass production capabilities.
Funny he should mention wind tunnels -- for those who are attending Comdex this week, note that there's a vertical wind tunnel only 1000 feet from the Las Vegas convention center.
The wind tunnel is powered by a 1,000 HP electric motor attached to a DC-3 propeller.
It's used to practice sky diving. If you're curious, you can see their website.
I just went Saturday with 4 others. For $45, you get flight instruction, plus about 3 minutes of "air" time. It was a total blast! My sister pocketed wind and ended up shooting up about 15 feet!
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This was more of a big deal when I spent a lot of time in the machine room, but it was also useful when I was tired and easily distracted -- a 100 count box of Moldex Pura-Fit 6800 ear plugs. A single box would last me about a year.
When purchased in bulk, foam ear plugs are reasonably affordable. NoiseBuster headphones are helpful, too, for cutting down machine noise -- but the earplugs are best.
I find myself tiring easily when constantly exposed to machine noise from loud PC's, routers, etc.
Geez, I could have sworn your titled said, "A very larg malloc"...
My eyes are bugging out from debugging memory-leaking code...
*shudder* that's a scary thought -- a bunch of ConRail train drivers at the controls of a nuclear reactor.
The reality has already been said by others -- Sub drivers go through more physics and engineering training than most of us "computer engineers" go through at school.
No joke - when a friend visited some distant relatives of his wife and identified himself as an engineer, they asked him which train company he worked for.
Very loosely speaking, I see the triad of 802.11, 802.11b, and 802.11a as being like the triad of Ethernet, FastEthernet, and GigabitEthernet.
There was once a time when everyone had Ethernet, and all was good, if a tad bit slow.
When FastEthernet came out, there was some initial hand wringing, but pretty much everyone has moved to FastEthernet and declared it The Standard. Since it was the prevailiing technology at the time that computers with integrated networking were starting to come out in droves, FastEthernet has achieved critical mass.
Now, Gigabit Ethernet is out, but no average home user will ever see it in his computer. He's not likely going to need that high performance, and is certainly not willing to pay for it. It's a specialty application product.
Similarly, the older 802.11 wireless cards (2 MBit) was a good thing at the time they came out; but they were still a bit too slow.
When 802.11b came out, the performance reached a good level for the most common wireless use. And the price is pretty darned good. And since most laptops with integrated wireless come with 802.11b, it is achieving (has achieved?) critical mass. (Or is that critical mess?)
Although 802.11a is now available, they are too expensive and have not yet achieved the interoperability track record of 802.11b. And, besides, if you have a portable wireless network application, you probably don't need the higher speed. Really now, when was the last time you compiled your kernel over wireless? Or streamed video from a server to watch it on your laptop while you're seated at your comfy couch?
The world got along fine with Plain Old Telephone Service for a 100 years.
Now, wired FastEthernet, and wireless 802.11b is the "pretty good and cheap" solution for the masses.
Well, as others have already mentioned, new components will likely out gas during the initial operating period. There's various new rubbber and plastic parts, and there may be some pastes (like under the heatsink) and adhesives that will also release the "new car smell" from your computer.
The important thing is to recognize the normal out gassing from something that's burning. If the smell tastes burnt, investigate the smell right away. If you see any sooty deposits (especially the black kinds), things have overheated to a dangerous level.
Perhaps your manufacturer has not burned in your new machine as long as what had been the norm. Computer manufacturers used to talk about having "72 hours of burn in" or "5 days of burn in". So, maybe you're on the earlier part of the curve in amount of smell being released.
Dang. It might be a virtual gesture, but there's around 100 characters in that screen shot. Each one represents a real person -- that's 100 real people moved enough to logon and gather for the ceremony.
And then, there's the girlfriend and sister.
*sniff*
Yeah, I agree wholehartedly with your concern. I once purchased a generic "book PC" because I thought it was perfect for my crowded desk.
But the damned thing was so loud that I couldn't stand it . Many "white box" generic PC's are awful in this regard.
I later bought some HP e-PC's which turned out to be a lot quieter; in part because HP moved the power supply outside to a power brick.
This Lex Thin-800E PC also uses an external power supply. Good. The CPU fan should be reasonably quiet under normal circumstances, provided they used a good quality (i.e., not the cheapest) fan.
BTW, The PCI riser is a nice touch. The HP e-PC does not have one.
You can get privacy filters for any monitor. 3M makes one which is available from any office supply store, like Staples.
This "invention" is silly. I can pick up a pair of polarized sunglasses for $8 at the local drug store.
You must have a really good reason for wanting to do this. If it's just for kicks, I say forget it. It'll be a very expensive pointless hobby.
By the time you sourced the parts, made the circuit board, and did the mechanical work to make the docking possible, you've spent far more than you would pay for the docking station.
Just buy a used docking station. You can even get aftermarket "USB docking stations" (if they suit your needs).
BTW, if your intent was to have custom IO ports for your laptop, you can get USB-based IO port/DAQ devices. Not terribly cheap, but easier.
Good link.
Aaargh. Serves me right for being lazy in my explanation...
What I was getting at is that if you just take a default configuration of your networking, and try to do bandwidth measurements with a remote "bandwidth tester" over a "public" network that has all sorts of hops between you and the test-server, you're likely to get not-so-good performance, and that 900Kbps is not a terribly bad number. As I said before, it depends partly on what doodads might be between the testing PC and the server (inclusive of the equipment on both ends). Poorly configured client PC's over a high-latency network can take a 1.5 Mbps connection and make it look like 400 Kbps...
You can, of course, run a test on a quiet and private network, with all the networking parameters tuned to optimal to get full utilization of your bandwidth.
This touches on some of the issues.
*sigh*
Guilty as charged. But with an explanation... I was just assuming he's been getting his 900kbps with remote bandwidth testers (located who knows where) on "untweaked" PC's.
Ahem. From this, it looks like you're really just buying Internet access with a "T1" rate. 900kbps is almost as good as you're going to get on a T1. Maybe upto 1.1Mbps or so, tops. You have to allow for protocol overhead, latency of all equipment between you and the "other side", and congestion that may or may not exist.
If you're getting T1 service, it should be possible to borrow a CSU/DSU, put it in remote-loopback, and make sure you have a full T1 of bandwidth. Or, if you own the router, you can just look at the statistics...
If you're talking about getting ISP service with "T1" equivalent bandwidth, that's a different story. You wouldn't be able to tell if the guy has "oversubscribed" you unless you find other buyers of the sevice and generate enough traffic to load down the DS-3.
To prevent getting burned, make sure your SLA clearly states the bandwidth you are expecting, and the means by which that is measured.
This puts a new meaning to using DevStudio to put together a program composed in C#.
Well, AFAIK, lot of the DVD players sold in stores in the Chinese community are not region-locked and many of them don't honor the various restriction controls. This is because they want to be able to watch imported videos. And, if you like Karaoke, these stores have plenty of Karaoke-enabled models, too!
Linear motors have been around for quite a while in non "levitation" applications to:
BTW, why did the FT put a picture of a CCD imager chip on an article about linear motors?
If people are going to compare computers to cars, they shouldn't complain about how hard it can be to fix them (ie. Oil Change, Tire Change, Rotation.. and WHY those things need to be done), no matter what OS they're running.
Well, I agree that cars don't translate well to operating systems; but I think the "gearheads" versus "commuter" mentality exists as "tech-heads" and "users".
GM and Ford makes cars for the mass market by making the car fairly uncomplicated (to the driver). And servicing the vehicle is easy because everybody carries parts and know how to repair them.
I think Linux is more like a limited-production car that require the owners to know much more intimate details about the car; and when something breaks, you can't just order it from NAPA. You have to rebuild the part (either from scratch, following a plan, or using pieces with some assembly required).
As a "daily driver", I like my Windows desktop. It let's me interoperate effectively with the world.
But I sure like to tinker with my ultra-modded performance car.
Uhm, yeah. So, tell me, do you own a car?
Do you like to configure the ignition curves for your engine?
Do you like to machine your own oil-filter base plate?
Do you like to plumb your air intake exactly the way you want it?
Do you like to adjust the exhaust pipe lengths to change the resonant frequency?
Most people want to just get in the car and drive. Heck, they want to NOT know the gory little details.
Do you have a link/biblio-reference to the info about the Russians buying the pinball machines?
One of my favorite Russian-CS-is-screwed is the story about the metric chips... This Byte article alludes to the original story... In short, the Russians stole western-technology and produced knock-off copies using "the metric inch" -- except when their poor-quality copied failed, they couldn't use real (stolen?) chips to repair their machines.
*assuming* that this technique ultimately becomes stable and useable in a home microwave (safety, cost, repeatability, yada yada), this would open up wonderful avenues -- imagine making your own jewelry and robotics parts without building a blast furnace!
I bet there could also be plastics that would be compatible with this process. Excellent for product prototyping.
The reality, though, is that it'll never be commercialized to the extent of becoming a hobbyist kit. Too bad.
Yeah. It sounded reasonable, except for the obvious heavy lawyer tone.
But, man, the letter sure looked fake. The guy says it is the actual letter; but the text and letter head graphics are too perfectly aligned (on crinkled paper, no less) to be a real scan.
At one time, there were two groups developing maglev systems in Japan. The government sponsored maglev which primarily relied on magnetic repulsion to levitate the train, and a private group (Japan airline I think was a cosponsor) using magnetic attraction.
I got to sit on a short test-track version of the latter system in Japan. I think around 1986 (there was a World's Fair IIRC).
It was the most incredible mass-transit experience in my life. The thing accelerated faster than a 747 at takeoff. And there was absolutely no sound or vibration. It was almost as if gravity suddenly went sideways as you were pressed against (or pulled away from, depending on your seating orientation) your seat.
Gawd, I sure hope a Maglev goes in between Los Angeles and Las Vegas and/or San Francisco. There used to be constant talk about it during the 80's and early 90's. Though not much these days...
Stacked memory devices? You mean like the ones Irvine Sensors have been making for 20 years?
To their credit, Matrix Semiconductors acknowledges that they weren't the first ones to do this; but rather that they (supposedly) are the first to have mass production capabilities.
Funny he should mention wind tunnels -- for those who are attending Comdex this week, note that there's a vertical wind tunnel only 1000 feet from the Las Vegas convention center.
The wind tunnel is powered by a 1,000 HP electric motor attached to a DC-3 propeller.
It's used to practice sky diving. If you're curious, you can see their website.
I just went Saturday with 4 others. For $45, you get flight instruction, plus about 3 minutes of "air" time. It was a total blast! My sister pocketed wind and ended up shooting up about 15 feet!