Not sure why this was modded +5 informative; it's a load of hooey...
Actually, it seems that most cheap computer mics are electrets with a preamp. So even though electret as such does not need a polarizing voltage, these units do. Makes me wonder if all these cheap "condenser" capsules I have bought for various projects are actually electrets with a preamp..
The mic input on a soundcard does have a voltage (usually +5V) applied to the ring of the input. The microphones typically used with a computer are neither of the condenser nor dynamic type, but are electret microphones.
Not sure why this was modded +5 informative; it's
a load of hooey...
Electret microphones don't require power, condenser mics do. But it's not like a condenser absolutely needs 48 volts to physically work. The small and cheap units used with computers work just fine with 5 volts.
shi ma? shishi shang shi bu shi zhen de? wo shishi shishi shishi la
While I suppose you COULD learn Chinese only with Pinyin, I can't imagine how painful that would be, and you'd never be able to read anything or be considered remotely literate. Probably why they never changed to pinyin.
Well of course it is painful if you omit the tones.
Or perhaps you meant the (IMHO) unusually high number of homophones, which makes Pinyin unsuitable for any remotely advanced text.
But some people can visualize such things, you insensitive 3-clod!
Seriously though, mathematical proofs cannot rely on a human's ability to visualize. Even the version in our dimensionality must be proved by doing the math.
The nose is fairly invariant under changes of glasses, hair, make up and so on. At least this was the reasoning in another article I read on the topic.
0K is considered the absolute zero, but It'll probably be challenged eventually
Temperature is the average kinetic energy of particles. When you go towards 0 K, particles move slower, and hypothetically at 0 K there is no motion. If you can imagine moving slower than zero speed, then you can start challenging this limit.
Magnetic flux is simply the area integral of magnetic field strength. You can't have one without the other. (For the pedantic, the integrand here is actually magnetic flux density, which is proportional to magnetic field strength.)
However, for inductive heating you need a time-varying magnetic flux, which in this case is probably achieved by varying the field strength. The field can still be aligned on an axis, so the method works anyway.
If anyone is in an IT related field and knows the difference between a 'bit' and a 'Byte', I guarantee you that they also know what the word 'per' means.
Agreed, perhaps this is only a matter of style. As a scientist I would never write something like mps for metres/second, even though the spoken unit is "metres per second". It would look silly and unprofessional, and I've already explained the point about mathematical symbols elsewhere in this thread.
Where does 'b' mean byte? I have never seen that in literature, and the only times I've seen it written in conversations it can generally be attributed to laziness, often accompanied by a lack of capitalization at all.
I once filed a bug about an application that used kb/s to denote kilobytes per second. It was changed to kB/s for a while, but pretty soon reverted to the lazy form. At least they used / though:)
Here's a nice example from the manpage of tc, part of iproute2:
Bandwidths or rates can be specified in:
kbps Kilobytes per second
mbps Megabytes per second
kbit Kilobits per second
mbit Megabits per second
bps or a bare number Bytes per second
Amounts of data can be specified in:
kb or k Kilobytes
mb or m Megabytes
mbit Megabits
kbit Kilobits
b or a bare number Bytes.
Well, perhaps this is so that you can write your command line in all lowercase. In other words, laziness.
b (bits) and s (second) don't work in all languages either.
Not the full words, but the same abbreviations are used everywhere. I admit my original argument on "per" was a bit hazy in this sense. But these are mathematical quantities, so we can use mathematical symbols for clarity and brevity. Mathematically, "bps" looks like b times p times s, which is not intended.
For example, here in the Nordic countries, the words for "hour" begin with a "t", but we still use km/h to denote speed in kilometres per hour. The same unit is used all over the world and understood without ambiguities. Scientific collaboration is possible even when you're not particularly fluent in the same language, since most scientists use the same units with the same abbreviations.
We spend lots of time complaining about people who confuse bps vs Bps, and milli with Mega, and there are the kibibyte vs kilobyte wars. And now b/s vs bps?
What about bit vs. byte? The lowercase "b" sometimes means bytes, sometimes bits.
"Per" is a word that does not work in all languages, whereas "/" is a universal mathematical symbol. Even non-scientists use units like km/h, at least in Europe.
providing "real" ARM 1ghz dual-core CPUs in a "cloud" where you can fit 2 to an SO-DIMM back-to-back with the actual memory, 1gb each, 20 of which will fit into a 1U rack-mount and still only consume 40 watts of power each, where you can fit 16 1U into a rack, and thus get 1280ghz of CPU power in a single rack - and that's a _low_ estimate.
the performance per watt and the performance per cubic metre figures are just through the _roof_ compared to x86 processors, and the only thing that's really stopping this from happening right now is because people don't believe that an ARM processor could ever be "good enough".
Sounds a little like this SiCortex box I found on Ebay the other day, too bad they only ship within the US:
The silly thing is that people don't generally run Windows on a supercomputing cluster, but they still use lots of closed applications, which is why x86-64 rules. So if the scientific computing crowd can't let go of the x86 legacy, how do you think the masses are going to do it?
To me this is mostly a matter of principle and cost. When going from a digital computer to a digital display, any analog conversion in between is an unnecessary waste of money, energy and hardware. More so if you want better quality conversion. Any such conversion introduces an inherent loss of quality — it may not be perceptible, but it is completely unnecessary.
Serial is a digital, bit-accurate protocol that has been phased out for a long time. On the other hand, we still have the analog blur of VGA as the only external display connection on many current computers.
Are there damn good reasons why RS-232 serial ports should be dropped from modern hardware? Hell yes, not the least of which is a 3-15 volt swing signalling protocol is an invitation to fry the low-voltage electronics on modern systems.
A lot of current embedded hardware has a serial connection with TTL levels. It may be for debugging/hacking only on the PCB, for example on my Nokia N800 and Buffalo Linkstation Live. On the other hand, some older equipment uses TTL level serial as the main outside connection, for example my old Nokia 6110 phone and my Casio graphing calculator. I guess the reason is not so much the fear of frying sensitive electronics, but the extra hardware needed to generate the higher voltages.
The LCD does look pretty impressive, it seems like it would totally address all of the concerns of those who claim you can't read books on an LCD. They forget that no LCD is emissive, they are all reflective at heart... it's just a matter of what the light source is.
Actually, LCDs are transmissive by nature. Put a mirror behind it, and it becomes reflective. This is how digital watches and calculators have worked for ages, though the "mirror" is not a smooth, shiny reflector for practical reasons. Today you can have a transreflective display with both a backlight and a mirror, thanks to improved light transmission through the LCD.
Slashdot Mirror
There are 10 people in the world, those with a sufficiently large base.
By those same arguments, 2 is an even more natural base. In binary, you can count to 1024 without removing your shoes, so 132 you ;)
I want my Web 5.1, with subtext in addition to the usual hypertext.
Not sure why this was modded +5 informative; it's a load of hooey...
Actually, it seems that most cheap computer mics are electrets with a preamp. So even though electret as such does not need a polarizing voltage, these units do. Makes me wonder if all these cheap "condenser" capsules I have bought for various projects are actually electrets with a preamp..
The mic input on a soundcard does have a voltage (usually +5V) applied to the ring of the input. The microphones typically used with a computer are neither of the condenser nor dynamic type, but are electret microphones.
Not sure why this was modded +5 informative; it's a load of hooey...
Electret microphones don't require power, condenser mics do. But it's not like a condenser absolutely needs 48 volts to physically work. The small and cheap units used with computers work just fine with 5 volts.
Hows that "grep" working for ya, and can you instantly make copies and then share, distribute, and backup using this newfangled "paper" gadget?
This was nicely summarized in someone's signature: "When you burn a book, nobody can read it. But when you burn a DVD, EVERYBODY can!"
True, but the output looks like crap.
shi ma? shishi shang shi bu shi zhen de? wo shishi shishi shishi la
While I suppose you COULD learn Chinese only with Pinyin, I can't imagine how painful that would be, and you'd never be able to read anything or be considered remotely literate. Probably why they never changed to pinyin.
Well of course it is painful if you omit the tones.
Or perhaps you meant the (IMHO) unusually high number of homophones, which makes Pinyin unsuitable for any remotely advanced text.
Stop trying to visualize it; you can't.
But some people can visualize such things, you insensitive 3-clod!
Seriously though, mathematical proofs cannot rely on a human's ability to visualize. Even the version in our dimensionality must be proved by doing the math.
The nose is fairly invariant under changes of glasses, hair, make up and so on. At least this was the reasoning in another article I read on the topic.
a time when cutting-edge surgery involved a dull axe
Wait, what? I don't think it's even bleeding edge.
0K is considered the absolute zero, but It'll probably be challenged eventually
Temperature is the average kinetic energy of particles. When you go towards 0 K, particles move slower, and hypothetically at 0 K there is no motion. If you can imagine moving slower than zero speed, then you can start challenging this limit.
From the amount of surplus equipment used by radioamateurs, it seems to me that they are quite on the trailing edge of technology...
Well, I see open source people doing cool new things with old hardware, while shiny new machines are being wasted on MS Office at most workplaces.
Magnetic flux is simply the area integral of magnetic field strength. You can't have one without the other. (For the pedantic, the integrand here is actually magnetic flux density, which is proportional to magnetic field strength.)
However, for inductive heating you need a time-varying magnetic flux, which in this case is probably achieved by varying the field strength. The field can still be aligned on an axis, so the method works anyway.
If anyone is in an IT related field and knows the difference between a 'bit' and a 'Byte', I guarantee you that they also know what the word 'per' means.
Agreed, perhaps this is only a matter of style. As a scientist I would never write something like mps for metres/second, even though the spoken unit is "metres per second". It would look silly and unprofessional, and I've already explained the point about mathematical symbols elsewhere in this thread.
Where does 'b' mean byte? I have never seen that in literature, and the only times I've seen it written in conversations it can generally be attributed to laziness, often accompanied by a lack of capitalization at all.
I once filed a bug about an application that used kb/s to denote kilobytes per second. It was changed to kB/s for a while, but pretty soon reverted to the lazy form. At least they used / though :)
Here's a nice example from the manpage of tc, part of iproute2:
Well, perhaps this is so that you can write your command line in all lowercase. In other words, laziness.
b (bits) and s (second) don't work in all languages either.
Not the full words, but the same abbreviations are used everywhere. I admit my original argument on "per" was a bit hazy in this sense. But these are mathematical quantities, so we can use mathematical symbols for clarity and brevity. Mathematically, "bps" looks like b times p times s, which is not intended.
For example, here in the Nordic countries, the words for "hour" begin with a "t", but we still use km/h to denote speed in kilometres per hour. The same unit is used all over the world and understood without ambiguities. Scientific collaboration is possible even when you're not particularly fluent in the same language, since most scientists use the same units with the same abbreviations.
We spend lots of time complaining about people who confuse bps vs Bps, and milli with Mega, and there are the kibibyte vs kilobyte wars. And now b/s vs bps?
What about bit vs. byte? The lowercase "b" sometimes means bytes, sometimes bits.
Yeah, because scientists in different countries use different units and symbols... oh, wait
What's wrong with "bps" instead of "b/s"?
"Per" is a word that does not work in all languages, whereas "/" is a universal mathematical symbol. Even non-scientists use units like km/h, at least in Europe.
providing "real" ARM 1ghz dual-core CPUs in a "cloud" where you can fit 2 to an SO-DIMM back-to-back with the actual memory, 1gb each, 20 of which will fit into a 1U rack-mount and still only consume 40 watts of power each, where you can fit 16 1U into a rack, and thus get 1280ghz of CPU power in a single rack - and that's a _low_ estimate.
the performance per watt and the performance per cubic metre figures are just through the _roof_ compared to x86 processors, and the only thing that's really stopping this from happening right now is because people don't believe that an ARM processor could ever be "good enough".
Sounds a little like this SiCortex box I found on Ebay the other day, too bad they only ship within the US:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150418027555
The silly thing is that people don't generally run Windows on a supercomputing cluster, but they still use lots of closed applications, which is why x86-64 rules. So if the scientific computing crowd can't let go of the x86 legacy, how do you think the masses are going to do it?
I'm a clod, you insensitive clod!
To me this is mostly a matter of principle and cost. When going from a digital computer to a digital display, any analog conversion in between is an unnecessary waste of money, energy and hardware. More so if you want better quality conversion. Any such conversion introduces an inherent loss of quality — it may not be perceptible, but it is completely unnecessary.
Serial is a digital, bit-accurate protocol that has been phased out for a long time. On the other hand, we still have the analog blur of VGA as the only external display connection on many current computers.
http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/vga.php
Are there damn good reasons why RS-232 serial ports should be dropped from modern hardware? Hell yes, not the least of which is a 3-15 volt swing signalling protocol is an invitation to fry the low-voltage electronics on modern systems.
A lot of current embedded hardware has a serial connection with TTL levels. It may be for debugging/hacking only on the PCB, for example on my Nokia N800 and Buffalo Linkstation Live. On the other hand, some older equipment uses TTL level serial as the main outside connection, for example my old Nokia 6110 phone and my Casio graphing calculator. I guess the reason is not so much the fear of frying sensitive electronics, but the extra hardware needed to generate the higher voltages.
The LCD does look pretty impressive, it seems like it would totally address all of the concerns of those who claim you can't read books on an LCD. They forget that no LCD is emissive, they are all reflective at heart... it's just a matter of what the light source is.
Actually, LCDs are transmissive by nature. Put a mirror behind it, and it becomes reflective. This is how digital watches and calculators have worked for ages, though the "mirror" is not a smooth, shiny reflector for practical reasons. Today you can have a transreflective display with both a backlight and a mirror, thanks to improved light transmission through the LCD.