Just as an example, here are some boards manufactured by Olimex.
Four boards panelized on a single 4x6 order, double sided, with 2 non-standard drill sizes and over 500 holes (980 something holes for all four boards), came out to $9.50 each, including shipping.
They are just basic AVR carrier boards with a perfboard area and space for a MAX233, so I put a little Tux in the silkscreen for geek-appeal.
Olimex is great, good prices and good quality boards. These four boards came to about $9.50 each.
I'm going to have Olimex do the next revision of my Binary Clock PCB too, to give it a more professional look.
I have published some details about the binary clock project if anyone is interested. I really should set up a web page for it, but I have never gotten around to it. The code, such as it is, is GPL.
they are just anti energy consumption. People like this aren't really environmentalists.
What? I'm anti energy consumption. That doesn't mean I think we should all live in caves, just that we (Americans in particular) are extraordinarily wasteful with our energy. There is nothing wrong with being anti energy comsumption.
If I were king I'd make incandescent lights illegal, replace all coal-fired power plants with those new pebble-bed reactors and build nuclear waste reprocessing plants all over so we can extract every last erg from the nuclear fuels we have. And yes, they can put it in my back yard.
And I think the selection of the leader of the most powerful country in the world should have a little more confidence than two ten-thousandths of a percent.
I agree. When it is that close we should force them to get married and share the oval office. They can alternate days in control and mud-wrestle for the monthly paycheck.
The Scientific American article I posted about says that paper ballots are even more subject to jamming than punch card ballots. And while they're human readable, they take much longer to count than electronic ballots.
And of course, here in the US, its more important that we know approximately how the vote came out instantly, rather than knowing exactly how the vote came out tomorrow.
I won't care much about voting, electronic or paper, until we have instant runoff voting. IMO the one-person-one-vote system we have now is much worse than the possibility that some e-voting machines can be compromised.
Yes, because no one has yet invented a system of writing for the blind that works on paper.
Of course electronic touch screens work much better.
Heres an idea. Lets train a bunch of election officials really well, inject them with an amnesiac drug then put them in the booth to write down peoples votes. They'll do it well, but won't remember it later. (the best part is, we won't have to pay them overtime).
If you are thinking in terms of purpose, reason, and logic, you have NOT put yourself in the shoes of the person in the hypothetical question.
Well, as someone with mild asperger syndrome, I'm not often in touch with my emotions. I'm motivated almost entirely by reason, purpose and a few weird neuroses (sometimes its just not worth fighting to be 'normal'). Were I to decide to kill someone for their transgressions, I fully expect I'd be more interested in the technical aspects of planning and execution (no pun intended) of the plan than the emotional payoff.
if invaders bomb/kill all your innocent family including your 7 years old daughter whose birthday you celebrated yesterday, would you die to avenge them?
No, what purpose would that serve? What good is revenge if you aren't around to hear the lamentations of your enemies women and children?
I've read that cell damage from low exposures to radiation results in programmed death of the damaged cells. However, when the radiation exposure is higher and more cells are damaged repair mechanisms are triggered.
The researchers speculated that its easier to kill of the cells than repair them, but the body can't kill off too many at once, and so can resort to repair in some cases.
No indication if repaired cells are more likely to become cancerous or otherwise fail.
If true, I find it fascinating that these robust recovery mechanisms have evolved. Makes me wonder what computer technology will be like when we can use advanced evolutionary techniques guided by intelligence to produce new systems.
We don't say that we eat "pig" or "cow." We eat "pork" and "beef."
Well, thats simply because 'pork' and 'beef' are words that describe the meat of hogs and cattle (generally not including organ meats, marrow, and other non-muscle parts). 'Pig' and 'cow' are the whole animals.
I think 'eating a pig' is covered by the sexual deviancy laws in most states.
I see plenty of poorly designed and difficult to maintain software, but ofte this is NOT a business problem. The problem is that some engineer muffed up the design or analysis and didn't realize it until it was too late to start over. As much as I'd like to rewrite much of the software I have to work on, the fact is if I'm going to get paid, the software has to make a profit, which means I can't go rewriting just because it isn't a elegant as it could be.
Sure it rubs me the wrong way every time I have to look at it, but if it will make more money as it is than if I took the time to rewrite it, it won't be rewritten.
Besides, I have a strong suspision that if all commercial software was beautifully engineered we would not have open source software. Ugly commercial code developed under tight deadlines is, I think, one of the primary reasons may developers write open source projects, because thats where they have the freedom to do it right, without worrying about project costs or deadlines.
Ok, we'll dig an enormous trench down the midde and call it 'The Gap Chasm'. Maybe we can get a small dragon to patrol it and eat anyone who forgets about him and attempts to cross.
As an alternative, pick up some X10 lamp modules (usually good for up to 300 watts of incandescent lights) for about 20 bucks and program your computer (I presume you already have one of those) to gradually ramp the lamps up at a specified time.
Maybe not quite a convienant since it doesn't have an easy way to do a fixed 8 hour delay, but on the other hand, most people want to wake up at a specifed time anyway, not 8 hours after they went to bed.
My bedroom window faces east so I get full sun in the face every summer morning, but I may investigate this idea for the winter. Maybe I can pipe in some fresh air (slightly warmed) and record some of those damn birds too. Gods but they are annoying.
The software I produce does something similar. Several core routines have a small chance of generating an access violation when a valid but unlicensed key is used. The error address displayed is "$60057EA1" (xxxSTEAL). The product is useable, but unstable enough that it can't really be used in a business environment (we don't care about home users), and if they call in with the error address, we know whats going on. The more clever crackers might recognize the address and at least get a good laugh out of it before they hack around it:)
I don't suppose thats a Motorola DCT2000? Thats what the local povider, Cox, uses, in addition to the new DVR boxes.
My research from a year ago indicates that there was an AT&T Tivo that was able to control this cable box via the serial port, but that most Tivos do not have the option.
I haven't been able to find anyone who knows anything about it, and without any inkling of the protocol, or whether these particular boxes even have that enabled in the software, I haven't been very motivated to experiment.
If you have any more information about it, or could snoop some of the data exchanged, I'd be very grateful.
Great, now if I could just get a digital cable decoder card that was supported by MythTV.
Just out of curiosity, if I set MythTV up with two baseband video capture inputs (no tuners, just video capture), and feed the video in from two digital cable boxes, can MythTV run an IR Commander-type output to seperately control the two cable boxes?
and want to work for the "eventual repeal of all taxes"
I'm all for more efficent use of tax money and smaller goverment (and therefore lower taxes), but how are you supposed to run a government with no money? Donations?
No taxes is a stupid idea. Lower taxes and more effective use of the money from those taxes is something I could get behind.
My girlfriend and I had just bought 28 acres to open a nursery next spring
Wow, 28 acres for a nursery? These new fertility drugs are getting redicilious!
Serious though, I'm curious if you plan on building more structures that the next storms will blow over, or will the permanent structures actually be designed with the climate in mind?
Its not that we've got too much Trek, its just that they are stuck with the same characters.
My idea is a Trek show run kind of like a cross between the last few seasons of DS9 and The Outer Limits. Pick a story in the Trek universe. Any story, past, present or future, choose a story in the empires of humans, vulcans, klingons, whomever. Run it like a SciFi channel mini-series. Use as many or as few episodes as it takes to tell that story. Maybe its just one episode, or maybe it takes a dozen to do the story right. When the story is done, thats it, its over. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Maintain an active online presence, and actually use fan suggestions. Pick up loose threads from other series, follow characters that showed up in other series. Sprinkle in episodes that tell the same story from the perspective of several different characters of different races.
The possibilities for such a show, particularly with writers that will pay attention to feedback from fans, are nearly endless, as is the potential for money-making spin-off series in the style of the older shows.
I loved TNG, most of it was really well done. But I got tired of the 'stateless' nature of the show. DS9 was cool once they got a real story going, but then at the end of the story they had to kill the show (well, it had been on the air long enough either way).
What I want now is a Trek show run kind of like a cross between the last few seasons of DS9 and The Outer Limits. Pick a story in the Trek universe. Any story, past, present or future, choose a story in the empires of humans, vulcans, klingons, whomever. Run it like a SciFi channel mini-series. Use as many or as few episodes as it takes to tell that story. Maybe its just one episode, or maybe it takes a dozen to do the story right. When the story is done, thats it, its over. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Maintain an active online presence, and actually use fan suggestions. Pick up loose threads from other series, follow characters that showed up in other series. Sprinkle in episodes that tell the same story from the perspective of several different characters of different races.
The possibilities for such a show, particularly with writers that will pay attention to feedback from fans, are nearly endless, as is the potential for money-making spin-off series in the style of the older shows.
Or alternatively, by the fact that kids are inadequately raised in the first place, so that they don't care about learning things they Need to Know. How ? By the process of socialization with each other, while being simultaneously bathed in an aura of consumerism and apathy.
Well, sure, but for some reason, I just don't really care.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that the beam from the CO2 laser that the grandparent was talking about is invisible.
the point is that the human being is incapable to assess low probability events .
Yes, what we need are some Puppeteer consultants.
Just as an example, here are some boards manufactured by Olimex.
Four boards panelized on a single 4x6 order, double sided, with 2 non-standard drill sizes and over 500 holes (980 something holes for all four boards), came out to $9.50 each, including shipping.
I just got some stuff back from Olimex for my computerized 1971 Impala project:
Here is an image of the boards.
They are just basic AVR carrier boards with a perfboard area and space for a MAX233, so I put a little Tux in the silkscreen for geek-appeal.
Olimex is great, good prices and good quality boards. These four boards came to about $9.50 each.
I'm going to have Olimex do the next revision of my Binary Clock PCB too, to give it a more professional look.
I have published some details about the binary clock project if anyone is interested. I really should set up a web page for it, but I have never gotten around to it. The code, such as it is, is GPL.
they are just anti energy consumption. People like this aren't really environmentalists.
What? I'm anti energy consumption. That doesn't mean I think we should all live in caves, just that we (Americans in particular) are extraordinarily wasteful with our energy. There is nothing wrong with being anti energy comsumption.
If I were king I'd make incandescent lights illegal, replace all coal-fired power plants with those new pebble-bed reactors and build nuclear waste reprocessing plants all over so we can extract every last erg from the nuclear fuels we have. And yes, they can put it in my back yard.
And I think the selection of the leader of the most powerful country in the world should have a little more confidence than two ten-thousandths of a percent.
I agree. When it is that close we should force them to get married and share the oval office. They can alternate days in control and mud-wrestle for the monthly paycheck.
The Scientific American article I posted about says that paper ballots are even more subject to jamming than punch card ballots. And while they're human readable, they take much longer to count than electronic ballots.
And of course, here in the US, its more important that we know approximately how the vote came out instantly, rather than knowing exactly how the vote came out tomorrow.
I won't care much about voting, electronic or paper, until we have instant runoff voting. IMO the one-person-one-vote system we have now is much worse than the possibility that some e-voting machines can be compromised.
Yes, because no one has yet invented a system of writing for the blind that works on paper.
Of course electronic touch screens work much better.
Heres an idea. Lets train a bunch of election officials really well, inject them with an amnesiac drug then put them in the booth to write down peoples votes. They'll do it well, but won't remember it later. (the best part is, we won't have to pay them overtime).
I am looking for the 20" (because there are no smaller LCD monitors which do 1600x1200)
Why is that? You see them on laptops all the time, but never as stand-alone. Is the laptop market eating them all up or what?
If you are thinking in terms of purpose, reason, and logic, you have NOT put yourself in the shoes of the person in the hypothetical question.
Well, as someone with mild asperger syndrome, I'm not often in touch with my emotions. I'm motivated almost entirely by reason, purpose and a few weird neuroses (sometimes its just not worth fighting to be 'normal'). Were I to decide to kill someone for their transgressions, I fully expect I'd be more interested in the technical aspects of planning and execution (no pun intended) of the plan than the emotional payoff.
if invaders bomb/kill all your innocent family including your 7 years old daughter whose birthday you celebrated yesterday, would you die to avenge them?
No, what purpose would that serve? What good is revenge if you aren't around to hear the lamentations of your enemies women and children?
I've read that cell damage from low exposures to radiation results in programmed death of the damaged cells. However, when the radiation exposure is higher and more cells are damaged repair mechanisms are triggered.
The researchers speculated that its easier to kill of the cells than repair them, but the body can't kill off too many at once, and so can resort to repair in some cases.
No indication if repaired cells are more likely to become cancerous or otherwise fail.
If true, I find it fascinating that these robust recovery mechanisms have evolved. Makes me wonder what computer technology will be like when we can use advanced evolutionary techniques guided by intelligence to produce new systems.
We don't say that we eat "pig" or "cow." We eat "pork" and "beef."
Well, thats simply because 'pork' and 'beef' are words that describe the meat of hogs and cattle (generally not including organ meats, marrow, and other non-muscle parts). 'Pig' and 'cow' are the whole animals.
I think 'eating a pig' is covered by the sexual deviancy laws in most states.
I see plenty of poorly designed and difficult to maintain software, but ofte this is NOT a business problem. The problem is that some engineer muffed up the design or analysis and didn't realize it until it was too late to start over. As much as I'd like to rewrite much of the software I have to work on, the fact is if I'm going to get paid, the software has to make a profit, which means I can't go rewriting just because it isn't a elegant as it could be.
Sure it rubs me the wrong way every time I have to look at it, but if it will make more money as it is than if I took the time to rewrite it, it won't be rewritten.
Besides, I have a strong suspision that if all commercial software was beautifully engineered we would not have open source software. Ugly commercial code developed under tight deadlines is, I think, one of the primary reasons may developers write open source projects, because thats where they have the freedom to do it right, without worrying about project costs or deadlines.
Ok, we'll dig an enormous trench down the midde and call it 'The Gap Chasm'. Maybe we can get a small dragon to patrol it and eat anyone who forgets about him and attempts to cross.
As an alternative, pick up some X10 lamp modules (usually good for up to 300 watts of incandescent lights) for about 20 bucks and program your computer (I presume you already have one of those) to gradually ramp the lamps up at a specified time.
Maybe not quite a convienant since it doesn't have an easy way to do a fixed 8 hour delay, but on the other hand, most people want to wake up at a specifed time anyway, not 8 hours after they went to bed.
My bedroom window faces east so I get full sun in the face every summer morning, but I may investigate this idea for the winter. Maybe I can pipe in some fresh air (slightly warmed) and record some of those damn birds too. Gods but they are annoying.
The software I produce does something similar. Several core routines have a small chance of generating an access violation when a valid but unlicensed key is used. The error address displayed is "$60057EA1" (xxxSTEAL). The product is useable, but unstable enough that it can't really be used in a business environment (we don't care about home users), and if they call in with the error address, we know whats going on. The more clever crackers might recognize the address and at least get a good laugh out of it before they hack around it :)
I don't suppose thats a Motorola DCT2000? Thats what the local povider, Cox, uses, in addition to the new DVR boxes.
My research from a year ago indicates that there was an AT&T Tivo that was able to control this cable box via the serial port, but that most Tivos do not have the option.
I haven't been able to find anyone who knows anything about it, and without any inkling of the protocol, or whether these particular boxes even have that enabled in the software, I haven't been very motivated to experiment.
If you have any more information about it, or could snoop some of the data exchanged, I'd be very grateful.
Great, now if I could just get a digital cable decoder card that was supported by MythTV.
Just out of curiosity, if I set MythTV up with two baseband video capture inputs (no tuners, just video capture), and feed the video in from two digital cable boxes, can MythTV run an IR Commander-type output to seperately control the two cable boxes?
and want to work for the "eventual repeal of all taxes"
I'm all for more efficent use of tax money and smaller goverment (and therefore lower taxes), but how are you supposed to run a government with no money? Donations?
No taxes is a stupid idea. Lower taxes and more effective use of the money from those taxes is something I could get behind.
My girlfriend and I had just bought 28 acres to open a nursery next spring
Wow, 28 acres for a nursery? These new fertility drugs are getting redicilious!
Serious though, I'm curious if you plan on building more structures that the next storms will blow over, or will the permanent structures actually be designed with the climate in mind?
Its not that we've got too much Trek, its just that they are stuck with the same characters.
My idea is a Trek show run kind of like a cross between the last few seasons of DS9 and The Outer Limits. Pick a story in the Trek universe. Any story, past, present or future, choose a story in the empires of humans, vulcans, klingons, whomever. Run it like a SciFi channel mini-series. Use as many or as few episodes as it takes to tell that story. Maybe its just one episode, or maybe it takes a dozen to do the story right. When the story is done, thats it, its over. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Maintain an active online presence, and actually use fan suggestions. Pick up loose threads from other series, follow characters that showed up in other series. Sprinkle in episodes that tell the same story from the perspective of several different characters of different races.
The possibilities for such a show, particularly with writers that will pay attention to feedback from fans, are nearly endless, as is the potential for money-making spin-off series in the style of the older shows.
That fits in a bit with my idea for Trek.
I loved TNG, most of it was really well done. But I got tired of the 'stateless' nature of the show. DS9 was cool once they got a real story going, but then at the end of the story they had to kill the show (well, it had been on the air long enough either way).
What I want now is a Trek show run kind of like a cross between the last few seasons of DS9 and The Outer Limits. Pick a story in the Trek universe. Any story, past, present or future, choose a story in the empires of humans, vulcans, klingons, whomever. Run it like a SciFi channel mini-series. Use as many or as few episodes as it takes to tell that story. Maybe its just one episode, or maybe it takes a dozen to do the story right. When the story is done, thats it, its over. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Maintain an active online presence, and actually use fan suggestions. Pick up loose threads from other series, follow characters that showed up in other series. Sprinkle in episodes that tell the same story from the perspective of several different characters of different races.
The possibilities for such a show, particularly with writers that will pay attention to feedback from fans, are nearly endless, as is the potential for money-making spin-off series in the style of the older shows.
Or alternatively, by the fact that kids are inadequately raised in the first place, so that they don't care about learning things they Need to Know.
How ? By the process of socialization with each other, while being simultaneously bathed in an aura of consumerism and apathy.
Well, sure, but for some reason, I just don't really care.