For really, really cheap small boards check out Olimex. Shipping from Bulgaria takes awhile, but they do panelization and depanelization for free. I did a one-off design that cost me $40 total, including shipping, and gave me 20 boards (about 1.5" by.5"). I've ordered small production runs (~160 pieces) for about half that per-panel rate.
I've got the Sony TRV-900, the consumer version of the PD-100. Great camera. Cost me about $1,400 used with lots of accessories a couple of years ago. It's a progressive scan 3 CCD camera, and I've got a friend who shoots weddings with it on a regular basis.
Several waterproof housings are available for it. I've been trying to justify getting one, but the cheapest that's usable for SCUBA is about $1,300 (with no lights), and since I only dive a few times a year I can't justify the expense.
I believe the FCC limits are on EIRP - effective isotropic radiated power. An isotropic radiator is a theoretical antenna that radiates equally in all directions. EIRP measures the equivalent amount of power an isotropic radiator would need to put out to equal the effective power of your non-isotropic antenna.
Say we take that energy from 180 degrees of the antenna's pattern and reflect it back along with the other 180 degrees. Now we've got twice the (effective) power, with half the coverage. This is EXACTLY what the EIRP rules are talking about.
Sorry, there's no getting around the rules just because you don't physically touch the radiating element...
I figure implementing a Linux-based content filtering system for my son will accomplish two things. It'll keep him out of porn for a bit, and teach him to hack Linux. =]
I think they're finally done with the converted Titan IIs. They were nice rockets, but not much fun to watch - no solid boosters, so no huge plumes of smoke or orange flame. Besides, at Vandenberg they usually disappear into a fog bank at about 50 feet altitude.
I wish I had it online, but someone did a joke commercial in the form of one of the old Cal Worthington spots, complete with jingle... something about "If your satellite's in trouble, go see Cal / If you're trying to get off shuttle go see Cal / 'Cause he's got a deal for you / On a pre-owned Titan II / Go see Cal, go see Cal, go see Cal!"
The sales pitches are great. Low miles, one owner, spent its whole life in a silo in Arizona, yours for the low, low price of $39,999,999! Or get this brand new '94 Titan IV, for only $299,999,999! (You have to picture the low, low prices flashing in bright yellow on the screen.)
Worse than that, where do you draw the line for 'storage'? IP uses packets. Between receiving a packet on one interface and sending it out another, a router STORES packets. Does it have to be non-volatile storage? Does that mean a mail server with a ramdisk spool isn't subject to this ruling? How long does a piece of information need to sit in one place during transit to be 'stored'?
Looks like you're out of luck unless you've got a switched circuit all the way through to your destination.
I remember when we used to have to do computer repair for UPS. Back in '95 or '96 there was quite a rash of false computer damage claims. I think someone started passing around instructions on how to rip off UPS, but it didn't take UPS long to catch on and start bringing in damage claims for assessment and repair.
I was working for a small local computer shop at the time and we didn't do a huge volume of UPS claims, but what I saw was outrageous. Yeah, there were a couple of legitimate claims - almost always loose cards or cables from vibration - but most of the fraudulent ones didn't even try. VLB cards stuck in ISA slots, toasted motherboards, junk components just jammed in a case... nothing that even looked remotely like shipping damage.
Not sure what they did to the people that tried to pull this stuff, but the claims seemed to stop almost as fast as they started.
Here is a pneumatic spud gun some friends of mine built a few years ago for a much smaller fireworks display. Yeah, the page is old and cheesy, but man that thing was fun. Its portable CO2-powered successor blew up in my back yard and took out a window, though. Bonus points if you can spot the retired child actor on that page.
Re:Going the way of the dinosaurs
on
Field Day 2004
·
· Score: 1
Computer hardware's not the issue. I've got a Soekris net4501 box here running Debian that I've been thinking of setting up as a digipeater. It's been sitting here happily running on solar power alone for three weeks now.
The real problem is on the RF side. Ham radio operators need radios. All the crusty old farts who sit around ragchewing on HF and 2 meters all day at least keep hardware sales going. When there are fewer of them, the rest of us are going to suffer from increasing prices as volumes drop.
Re:Going the way of the dinosaurs
on
Field Day 2004
·
· Score: 1
True, I think those that do choose to get involved in the hobby are more technically inclined. But the big problem with losing numbers is the lack of commercial hardware. Cheap, high-quality hardware will only be available as long as there are enough people to buy it. In fields like packet radio, this is already a problem. Look at the offerings from companies like Kantronics - they've offered very little in the way of innovation in recent years, they're still selling the same old entry-level 1200 baud TNCs for $180, and when they release new firmware you've got to shell out $60 for a chip.
Open source can change some of those things, but as far as hardware goes you still need someone willing to put up considerable amounts of money for manufacturing.
Re:Going the way of the dinosaurs
on
Field Day 2004
·
· Score: 1
And some of us are still squeezing everything we can out of a 1200-baud AFSK mesh network. Yeah, it's 1970s technology, but it's easily hackable and cheap.
I think European hams have taken the lead in bringing the open source movement to the hobby. It's strange that it's taken so long in the states, since the communities seem to have so much in common. I've got my own open source project going, and I'm happy to see that my efforts have apparently led to at least a couple of other projects being open sourced. Hopefully the trend will continue.
Re:Going the way of the dinosaurs
on
Field Day 2004
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Sec. 97.113, paragrah (4):
(4) Music using a phone emission except as specifically provided elsewhere in this section; communications intended to facilitate a criminal act; messages in codes or ciphers intended to obscure the meaning thereof, except as otherwise provided herein; obscene or indecent words or language; or false or deceptive messages, signals or identification
One-time passwords and challenge/response authentication are indeed used in some ham applications. Many hams have a knee-jerk reaction to any mention of cryptography, though, so be prepared to quote chapter and verse. The key phrase there is 'intended to obscure the meaning'. You're not obscuring any information, just proving who you are.
I think this is one of those things that's going to stay '5 years away' for the next 30 or so.
Algorithmic functions like balance have improved, sure. But how much real progress have we seen in fields like speach recognition and machine vision? Just look at the results of the DARPA Grand Challenge. Or my stupid cellphone with its voice dialing. It's only got half a dozen samples to compare against, and yet it takes about three seconds and never manages to distinguish between 'Keri' and 'Debbie', and won't ever accept 'Lee' (or any other one-syllable names, for that matter) at all.
It was true 30 years ago, and it's true today. AI is bogus.
The only branch of AI that I have any faith in is neural networks. We've got pretty good evidence that they WILL work if we figure out how, but I don't see that we've gotten much closer to that point in the last 30 years either.
As for working with machines as partners, STOP TRYING TO MAKE MY TOOLS SMART! They're tools. Make them do what I tell them to do, not what they THINK I'm trying to do. Hell, working with dogs is a challenge sometimes, and they're orders of magnitude smarter than any software that's out there now.
I was once contacted by someone from this organization, and they didn't strike me as nutjobs. I work at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where we launch rockets and occasionally cause weird lights in the sky, especially during twilight launches.
These folks simply called to verify that reports of lights in the sky they'd received did indeed correspond to our launches. As far as I could tell, they were simply interested in investigating and explaining claims.
Now, maybe they do have nutjobs there, but investigating physical phenomena doesn't automatically mean you're crazy.
The cheapest and easiest way to set up a renderfarm is to use someone else's computers!
We used to run Lightwave for work-related projects, but we only had a few machines allocated to the media lab. So after hours, we'd sneak around the cube farms and pop a client boot disk in every machine we could find.
Re:Iron oxide, cellulose acetate, and aluminum pow
on
Zeppelin Flies Again
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Iron oxide and powdered aluminum? Holy crap, there's some brilliant engineering for you.
"Hmmm... this hydrogen-filled airship is flammable... but couldn't we make it MORE flammable?"
Seems to me that playing the song on the radio, at the label's expense, would be the simplest way to promote album sales.
Hopefully this trend will continue, leaving the stations free to play a more interesting variety, if the mass-market crap they're playing now migrates to paid ads. Why play it for free when the labels are willing to pay for it?
Turing's always been something of a hero to me, too.
You might be surprised... I'm not sure about CS students in general, but the hacker subculture at least has more than its share of non-heterosexuals. Of course, gay nerds being generally as socially inept and introverted as straight nerds, that's not likely to do you much good. =]
Not all coding is huge amounts of overtime and odd hours. I work for a government contractor, make pretty decent money, and still have time to raise two kids on my own.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, plutonium is probably toxic by itself, like other heavy metals, but its radiotoxicity will kill you way before you have to worry about that.
But yeah, the point is it's far more dangerous if ingested or inhaled.
"That pic is useless for determining hotness level."
/. crowd.
Dude... she's clearly female, and has a laptop. That's good enough for the
For really, really cheap small boards check out Olimex. Shipping from Bulgaria takes awhile, but they do panelization and depanelization for free. I did a one-off design that cost me $40 total, including shipping, and gave me 20 boards (about 1.5" by .5"). I've ordered small production runs (~160 pieces) for about half that per-panel rate.
I've got the Sony TRV-900, the consumer version of the PD-100. Great camera. Cost me about $1,400 used with lots of accessories a couple of years ago. It's a progressive scan 3 CCD camera, and I've got a friend who shoots weddings with it on a regular basis.
Several waterproof housings are available for it. I've been trying to justify getting one, but the cheapest that's usable for SCUBA is about $1,300 (with no lights), and since I only dive a few times a year I can't justify the expense.
I believe the FCC limits are on EIRP - effective isotropic radiated power. An isotropic radiator is a theoretical antenna that radiates equally in all directions. EIRP measures the equivalent amount of power an isotropic radiator would need to put out to equal the effective power of your non-isotropic antenna.
Say we take that energy from 180 degrees of the antenna's pattern and reflect it back along with the other 180 degrees. Now we've got twice the (effective) power, with half the coverage. This is EXACTLY what the EIRP rules are talking about.
Sorry, there's no getting around the rules just because you don't physically touch the radiating element...
You don't need a robot for that. You need a forklift...
I figure implementing a Linux-based content filtering system for my son will accomplish two things. It'll keep him out of porn for a bit, and teach him to hack Linux. =]
I think they're finally done with the converted Titan IIs. They were nice rockets, but not much fun to watch - no solid boosters, so no huge plumes of smoke or orange flame. Besides, at Vandenberg they usually disappear into a fog bank at about 50 feet altitude.
I wish I had it online, but someone did a joke commercial in the form of one of the old Cal Worthington spots, complete with jingle... something about "If your satellite's in trouble, go see Cal / If you're trying to get off shuttle go see Cal / 'Cause he's got a deal for you / On a pre-owned Titan II / Go see Cal, go see Cal, go see Cal!"
The sales pitches are great. Low miles, one owner, spent its whole life in a silo in Arizona, yours for the low, low price of $39,999,999! Or get this brand new '94 Titan IV, for only $299,999,999! (You have to picture the low, low prices flashing in bright yellow on the screen.)
Worse than that, where do you draw the line for 'storage'? IP uses packets. Between receiving a packet on one interface and sending it out another, a router STORES packets. Does it have to be non-volatile storage? Does that mean a mail server with a ramdisk spool isn't subject to this ruling? How long does a piece of information need to sit in one place during transit to be 'stored'?
Looks like you're out of luck unless you've got a switched circuit all the way through to your destination.
Let's hear it for analog...
I remember when we used to have to do computer repair for UPS. Back in '95 or '96 there was quite a rash of false computer damage claims. I think someone started passing around instructions on how to rip off UPS, but it didn't take UPS long to catch on and start bringing in damage claims for assessment and repair.
I was working for a small local computer shop at the time and we didn't do a huge volume of UPS claims, but what I saw was outrageous. Yeah, there were a couple of legitimate claims - almost always loose cards or cables from vibration - but most of the fraudulent ones didn't even try. VLB cards stuck in ISA slots, toasted motherboards, junk components just jammed in a case... nothing that even looked remotely like shipping damage.
Not sure what they did to the people that tried to pull this stuff, but the claims seemed to stop almost as fast as they started.
Here is a pneumatic spud gun some friends of mine built a few years ago for a much smaller fireworks display. Yeah, the page is old and cheesy, but man that thing was fun. Its portable CO2-powered successor blew up in my back yard and took out a window, though. Bonus points if you can spot the retired child actor on that page.
Computer hardware's not the issue. I've got a Soekris net4501 box here running Debian that I've been thinking of setting up as a digipeater. It's been sitting here happily running on solar power alone for three weeks now.
The real problem is on the RF side. Ham radio operators need radios. All the crusty old farts who sit around ragchewing on HF and 2 meters all day at least keep hardware sales going. When there are fewer of them, the rest of us are going to suffer from increasing prices as volumes drop.
True, I think those that do choose to get involved in the hobby are more technically inclined. But the big problem with losing numbers is the lack of commercial hardware. Cheap, high-quality hardware will only be available as long as there are enough people to buy it. In fields like packet radio, this is already a problem. Look at the offerings from companies like Kantronics - they've offered very little in the way of innovation in recent years, they're still selling the same old entry-level 1200 baud TNCs for $180, and when they release new firmware you've got to shell out $60 for a chip.
Open source can change some of those things, but as far as hardware goes you still need someone willing to put up considerable amounts of money for manufacturing.
I think European hams have taken the lead in bringing the open source movement to the hobby. It's strange that it's taken so long in the states, since the communities seem to have so much in common. I've got my own open source project going, and I'm happy to see that my efforts have apparently led to at least a couple of other projects being open sourced. Hopefully the trend will continue.
Sec. 97.113, paragrah (4):
(4) Music using a phone emission except as specifically provided elsewhere in this section; communications intended to facilitate a
criminal act; messages in codes or ciphers intended to obscure the meaning thereof, except as otherwise provided herein; obscene or indecent words or language; or false or deceptive messages, signals or identification
One-time passwords and challenge/response authentication are indeed used in some ham applications. Many hams have a knee-jerk reaction to any mention of cryptography, though, so be prepared to quote chapter and verse. The key phrase there is 'intended to obscure the meaning'. You're not obscuring any information, just proving who you are.
Neural networks as they've been implemented so far are as bogus as the rest, I'll grant you that.
I'm talking about the big neural network in your head - THAT is our proof that the concept does work. Though maybe not quite as we understand it.
I think this is one of those things that's going to stay '5 years away' for the next 30 or so.
Algorithmic functions like balance have improved, sure. But how much real progress have we seen in fields like speach recognition and machine vision? Just look at the results of the DARPA Grand Challenge. Or my stupid cellphone with its voice dialing. It's only got half a dozen samples to compare against, and yet it takes about three seconds and never manages to distinguish between 'Keri' and 'Debbie', and won't ever accept 'Lee' (or any other one-syllable names, for that matter) at all.
It was true 30 years ago, and it's true today. AI is bogus.
The only branch of AI that I have any faith in is neural networks. We've got pretty good evidence that they WILL work if we figure out how, but I don't see that we've gotten much closer to that point in the last 30 years either.
As for working with machines as partners, STOP TRYING TO MAKE MY TOOLS SMART! They're tools. Make them do what I tell them to do, not what they THINK I'm trying to do. Hell, working with dogs is a challenge sometimes, and they're orders of magnitude smarter than any software that's out there now.
Here you go.
I was once contacted by someone from this organization, and they didn't strike me as nutjobs. I work at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where we launch rockets and occasionally cause weird lights in the sky, especially during twilight launches.
These folks simply called to verify that reports of lights in the sky they'd received did indeed correspond to our launches. As far as I could tell, they were simply interested in investigating and explaining claims.
Now, maybe they do have nutjobs there, but investigating physical phenomena doesn't automatically mean you're crazy.
The cheapest and easiest way to set up a renderfarm is to use someone else's computers!
We used to run Lightwave for work-related projects, but we only had a few machines allocated to the media lab. So after hours, we'd sneak around the cube farms and pop a client boot disk in every machine we could find.
Iron oxide and powdered aluminum? Holy crap, there's some brilliant engineering for you.
"Hmmm... this hydrogen-filled airship is flammable... but couldn't we make it MORE flammable?"
"I know! Let's dope it with thermite!"
Seems to me that playing the song on the radio, at the label's expense, would be the simplest way to promote album sales.
Hopefully this trend will continue, leaving the stations free to play a more interesting variety, if the mass-market crap they're playing now migrates to paid ads. Why play it for free when the labels are willing to pay for it?
Turing's always been something of a hero to me, too.
You might be surprised... I'm not sure about CS students in general, but the hacker subculture at least has more than its share of non-heterosexuals. Of course, gay nerds being generally as socially inept and introverted as straight nerds, that's not likely to do you much good. =]
Not all coding is huge amounts of overtime and odd hours. I work for a government contractor, make pretty decent money, and still have time to raise two kids on my own.
Granted, I haven't had a date in a year...
Nope. That'd be The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe.