So, where can I download opensource hardware for free?;-)
Think about it, even if there was such a thing as free (beer and speech) opensource hardware, you'd need pretty fat pipes to download, say, a 40 inch opensource plasma screen. My DSL is just a few millimetres across.
Yeah, I probably could do this with xmms...but why?
It's hard to explain, but I couldn't stand listening to several pieces of music without a playlist-based system like XMMS. For example, you have this list of 100 songs and you want to jump into a specific piece (not just the next or previous one). Try doing this with a keypress or two on mplayer -shuffle.
For movies I use MPlayer, and I like to keep these two things separate. I haven't come across a situation where I'd need a playlist of movies, and MPlayer's CLI is just perfect for what the program does.
[Shameles plug alert] However, XMMS is not IMHO the best possible playlist, which is why I've hacked together a textmode frontend for XMMS.
You can make a cluster of telescopes, the technique is called interferometry. However, combining the results from individual dishes requires painstaking detail. The lengths of the signal paths must be matched to a degree less than the wavelength of the signals. For radio astronomy this has been done for a long time, because the wavelengths are quite manageable. The optical equivalents are only quite recent and not that widely deployed, but here is one example that I know of.
As far as I've been able to gather, the "White Stripes" are a band taking pride in the fact that they're pretty "anti-technology". Their whole thing is about not using any electronic/synthetic instruments, and going back to the basics.
They use electric guitars. The bassline of Seven Nation Army comes from a guitar through an octave pedal. Sounds like technology to me.
Of course, you could say they take pride in not using any technology invented after some arbitrary point in time.
In Finland it's legal to _download_ anything you find on the net. However, _distributing_ content without permission is illegal. The reasoning why downloading is legal is that you can't verify whether the download site has the permissions. So, for example, it's legal to run Gnutella as long as you don't share anything without permission.
Of course, things get murky with applications like BitTorrent which rely on simultaneous uploads and downloads. I think of BT as a method of downloading, but I'm not sure how legal is really is. In any case it's a good example of the futility of the concept of "intellectual" property.
The Shuttle article made a note about the low noise of the SB62G2. Can anyone verify the noise issue on other Shuttle models? I'm trying to decide between an EPIA system and an older Shuttle model, and I'd be interested in any experiences (with Linux, of course).
DVD-RAM is not a competitor of the +-RW formats. The discs are block-based and therefore have true random access, unlike the continuous spiral of DVD+- and CDs. In addition they tolerate a far larger number of rewrites, so overall they are very close to removable hard drives.
One consequence of this is that you can read and write them at the same time. There are some DVD-RAM recorders that provide time shifting, i.e. you can start watching a recording even before it's finished.
There was a post by Linus saying why he dislikes the framebuffer. The main reason seemed to be that if your framebuffer dies, you're in deep shit; while if X dies, you still have your virtual consoles to work with.
I'd be curious if there's any relationship between the non-slowing of the earth's rotation and the decrease in the earth's magnetic field, mentioned in Slashdot a couple of weeks ago.
If there are electric conductors around, then this is pretty obvious (from a physicists's POV:). You can try this by waving a magnet next to a nonmagnetic conductor (e.g. copper plate). The induced currents will tend to slow down the motion; if the magnetic field is weaker, the effect is less pronounced.
The only obvious conductor I can think of is the solar wind (it is formed of charged particles which are relatively free to move under electromagnetic forces). I'm not sure how much it can affect the rotation though. Besides there are other factors that slow down Earth's rotation, notably the tidal effects of the Moon.
Solid ice is an insulator, because it does not have moving ions. However, in liquid form, even distilled water does conduct some current because of the autoprotolysis of water molecules.
I think CD's and DVD's are some of the crappiest pieces of technology about. There clunky, just to big to hold easily in your hand (escpecially if your female)
I disagree on the size issue. Smaller discs would get lost more easily, and have less room for booklets etc. More importantly, they would probably end up stuffed into pockets, where they would get stratched and bent/broken easily. The size is just big enough to provide some indirect protection, but also small enough to be convenient (compared to vinyls, for example).
the driving signal must be sinus (the energy confined in a narrow spectrum). This is very difficult. A magnetic transformer is usually driven in switching-mode - certainly all AC-adaptors (off-line AC/DC converters) for laptops are.
Add to this the point made in another post: DC appliances require those higher harmonics.
Regulators are very much not the equivalent of transformers. They can only give a voltage drop, but the current is kept constant, which is why some energy is wasted.
For example, converting from 6 V to 5 V at a current of 1 A means a voltage drop of 1 V. Input power is 6V * 1A = 6 W, whereas output power is 5V * 1A = 5 W. The difference is wasted heat, and you can always calculate this as voltage drop times current. You need to choose a suitable heatsink to accommodate the heat. For many electronic gadgets the current is small enough that the waste is not a concern, but with computers you need several amps, so a regulator would be out of the question.
However, a transformer from 6 V to 5 V would have ideally equal input and output power. Keeping the input at 6 V, 1 A, the output would be 5 V at 1.2 A, i.e. the same power, no waste. However, "DC transformers" are always a little complicated (basically inverter+transformer+rectifier) and there are other losses.
I attended a lecture on this topic several years ago. One of our professors used silicon straining to alter the wavelength of LEDs. He had originally noticed how the wavelengths of LEDs of different materials correlates with the interatomic separation in the material. That led him to think whether it's merely the lattice separation, instead of the material itself, that matters.
I'd like to add that the foamy head on the beer is made of bubbles(1) that have come as bubbles(2) from the beer below. The formation of antibubbles, as explained in the article, is again the exact opposite: you need to shoot airborne blobs of liquid (one surface) into the liquid, where it gets another piece of surface, forming an antibubble(2) of two surfaces.
Slashdot Mirror
Think about it, even if there was such a thing as free (beer and speech) opensource hardware, you'd need pretty fat pipes to download, say, a 40 inch opensource plasma screen. My DSL is just a few millimetres across.
It's hard to explain, but I couldn't stand listening to several pieces of music without a playlist-based system like XMMS. For example, you have this list of 100 songs and you want to jump into a specific piece (not just the next or previous one). Try doing this with a keypress or two on mplayer -shuffle.
For movies I use MPlayer, and I like to keep these two things separate. I haven't come across a situation where I'd need a playlist of movies, and MPlayer's CLI is just perfect for what the program does.
[Shameles plug alert] However, XMMS is not IMHO the best possible playlist, which is why I've hacked together a textmode frontend for XMMS.
You can make a cluster of telescopes, the technique is called interferometry. However, combining the results from individual dishes requires painstaking detail. The lengths of the signal paths must be matched to a degree less than the wavelength of the signals. For radio astronomy this has been done for a long time, because the wavelengths are quite manageable. The optical equivalents are only quite recent and not that widely deployed, but here is one example that I know of.
Tom's Hardware will go to hell.... to cool their 6.66 GHz Pentia.
They use electric guitars. The bassline of Seven Nation Army comes from a guitar through an octave pedal. Sounds like technology to me.
Of course, you could say they take pride in not using any technology invented after some arbitrary point in time.
Of course, things get murky with applications like BitTorrent which rely on simultaneous uploads and downloads. I think of BT as a method of downloading, but I'm not sure how legal is really is. In any case it's a good example of the futility of the concept of "intellectual" property.
The Shuttle article made a note about the low noise of the SB62G2. Can anyone verify the noise issue on other Shuttle models? I'm trying to decide between an EPIA system and an older Shuttle model, and I'd be interested in any experiences (with Linux, of course).
Apparently yes.
Well, I used to run dnetc on a CERN cluster, so obviously I am more 0x539 than you!
Do not try to read step five, for that is impossible. Instead, try to realize the truth. There is no step five.
One consequence of this is that you can read and write them at the same time. There are some DVD-RAM recorders that provide time shifting, i.e. you can start watching a recording even before it's finished.
There was a post by Linus saying why he dislikes the framebuffer. The main reason seemed to be that if your framebuffer dies, you're in deep shit; while if X dies, you still have your virtual consoles to work with.
If there are electric conductors around, then this is pretty obvious (from a physicists's POV :). You can try this by waving a magnet next to a nonmagnetic conductor (e.g. copper plate). The induced currents will tend to slow down the motion; if the magnetic field is weaker, the effect is less pronounced.
The only obvious conductor I can think of is the solar wind (it is formed of charged particles which are relatively free to move under electromagnetic forces). I'm not sure how much it can affect the rotation though. Besides there are other factors that slow down Earth's rotation, notably the tidal effects of the Moon.
Solid ice is an insulator, because it does not have moving ions. However, in liquid form, even distilled water does conduct some current because of the autoprotolysis of water molecules.
if I install a wind turbine next to my CPU cooler, will the machine power itself forever?
Agreed! I got my present admin job because I grok LANs. Oh, you mean THAT kind of networking...
I disagree on the size issue. Smaller discs would get lost more easily, and have less room for booklets etc. More importantly, they would probably end up stuffed into pockets, where they would get stratched and bent/broken easily. The size is just big enough to provide some indirect protection, but also small enough to be convenient (compared to vinyls, for example).
Free (libre) open source software. Libre meaning freedom, as opposed to zero price.
Add to this the point made in another post: DC appliances require those higher harmonics.
For example, converting from 6 V to 5 V at a current of 1 A means a voltage drop of 1 V. Input power is 6V * 1A = 6 W, whereas output power is 5V * 1A = 5 W. The difference is wasted heat, and you can always calculate this as voltage drop times current. You need to choose a suitable heatsink to accommodate the heat. For many electronic gadgets the current is small enough that the waste is not a concern, but with computers you need several amps, so a regulator would be out of the question.
However, a transformer from 6 V to 5 V would have ideally equal input and output power. Keeping the input at 6 V, 1 A, the output would be 5 V at 1.2 A, i.e. the same power, no waste. However, "DC transformers" are always a little complicated (basically inverter+transformer+rectifier) and there are other losses.
I would continue using Linux as usual, because morality and common sense are more important than law.
I attended a lecture on this topic several years ago. One of our professors used silicon straining to alter the wavelength of LEDs. He had originally noticed how the wavelengths of LEDs of different materials correlates with the interatomic separation in the material. That led him to think whether it's merely the lattice separation, instead of the material itself, that matters.
I agree very much, but how many alternatives do we have? For example, what is the Linux driver situation with latest ATI cards?
This.
I'd like to add that the foamy head on the beer is made of bubbles(1) that have come as bubbles(2) from the beer below. The formation of antibubbles, as explained in the article, is again the exact opposite: you need to shoot airborne blobs of liquid (one surface) into the liquid, where it gets another piece of surface, forming an antibubble(2) of two surfaces.