Okay, my understanding is limited but I'm not completely braindead. Setting R to 0 was a mistake that I overlooked - I meant to set R to 1. You didn't read my responses to previous posts, it seems.
I don't claim to know much about Electrical Engineering - that's not what I'm studying. I was trying to be helpful but I obviously don't know enough. I wasn't trying to sound authoritative or cocky.
I also don't claim to know a lot about Software Engineering - I'm only in Second Year. This sums up what I know about software design:
Step 1: Help the user determine what the problem they are trying to solve is.
Step 2: Determine the best tool for the job.
Step 3: If the best tool is an algorythmic one, break the problem down into smaller and smaller parts until you've got a whole pile of single tasks.
Step 5: Design an algorythm to perform each task. Test thoroughly and examine all cases.
Step 6: Implement your algorythms on the computer if it's appropriate.
Step 7: Test the fuck out of your implementations then assemble them into a program. Then test the fuck out of the program.
Step 7: Let the user play with the program and get their feedback.
Step 8: Repeat steps 1 - 7 as necessary.
I hope that shows you that I know something about SE and that I'm not completely full of shit. I know I've still got a lot to learn.
Proper engineering curricula preclude graduates from giving advice where they oughtn't.
Firstly, I'm not a graduate.
Secondly, if I were a graduate, I wouldn't give out advice like this - it makes people think it's good advice. I didn't say this was good advice. Actually I said that it probably wasn't good advice (don't try this at home). Not only that but I also know that anything I say after I attain my degree can be held as the advice of an Engineer, even something like telling my neighbor that he ought to use screws to build his deck instead of nails. If my neighbor's deck collapses I can be held liable and lose my Engineering license.
The software engineering program I'm in is "real" engineering, as you put it, and I'm rather disappointed that you don't view software as being worthy of the engineering profession. My program was reviewed by the PEO and is accredited as an engineering discipline.
Absolutely I wouldn't put my own life in the hands of a piece of computer hardware I had built - I don't have the training to build hardware and I stated that in my original post. Similarly, I wouldn't build a building I had designed - I'm not a Civil Engineer. I would, on the other hand, put my life in the hands of a mission critical or failsafe piece of software that I wrote. Who wrote the software that's going to run my pacemaker when I'm older? I'd make damn sure it was a Software Engineer.
Alright, in classic slashdot style I don't actually know that much about what I'm talking about but I did state that in the post.
About constant-current devices - as I mentioned, I'm applying my 1st Year physics course here which didn't cover this.
"You can substitute R = 0" Bleh. Yes I screwed it up. I was thinking R = 1 which changes everything. Oops.
Incidentally we didn't cover rectifiers in my course either, I just happened to know that diodes direct current flow from tinkering with my electronics kit as a kid.
You can fairly easily put the voltage from the rails up from 15V to 24V - all it takes is a resistor.
Just as a disclaimer, I'm a Software Engineering student applying my 1st Year Physics knowledge so this will get you the desired voltage but likely will not get you the desired effect. It could also burn out the camera, the train's motor, etc.. Don't try this at home unless you know what you're doing.
Voltage = Current times Resistance V = I * R
Initial Voltage: 15 = I * R Desired Voltage: 24 = I * (R + r)
You can substitute in R = 0 because the starting resistance is irrelevant, giving you a value of I = 15 for the first equation (note that this isn't the actual current in the circuit unless R = 0 which can't happen). Current (I) stays the same for the desired voltage so we have:
24 = 15 * (0 + r) 24 / 15 = r r = 1.6 ohms
The (+/-) voltage problem can be eliminated using a diode which will restrict electron flow to one direction. I wouldn't suggest that you try this unless you know exactly how a diode works, however.
Maybe the wanker-in-an-SUV problem is just in Canada.
This reminds me of a story my friend whose father is a Police officer was telling me. It was about an incident with a woman driving down the road in a Jeep while talking on a cell phone.
Apparently she was completely oblivious because she drove right over a line of flares, through an accident scene and over a second line of flares without even noticing. That's bad enough but it gets worse.
Not only did she not notice the accident scene, she also failed to notice multiple police cars following her down the highway with lights and sirens on trying to get her to pull over. Brace yourself, it gets worse.
While she was on her merry romp through the accident scene she had managed to run over the body of someone who had died in the crash. The body caught on the undercarriage of the vehicle and she dragged this poor person down the road for almost twenty minutes before she noticed the flashing lights and sirens and hung up her phone. Her comment when she finally pulled over and the police asked her what the hell she was doing?
I'm in an Engineering and Society program and just recently finished a course on sustainability. One of the topics of inquiry that we focused on was transportation and there are (Canadian) Government statistics that I believe came from the Drive Clean program (which attempts to reduce harmful vehicle emissions) that were pretty damning against SUVs. That's where the 5x the pollution statistic in my original post came from.
If the pollution statistics are accurate, it seems completely irresponsible for people to be driving SUVs because they're hurting everyone in the long run including themselves, most especially if they are riding alone and not hauling cargo.
I did a count on a busy road one day while I was waiting for the bus. Of the 50 or so vehicles I counted, less than 5 had more than one occupant and more than half were obscenely large SUVs or pickups.
Regarding structural strength and decreased mass, it's not the body of the vehicle that makes the difference safety-wise, it's the safety cage - the frame, the crumple zones, etc.. If you decrease the mass of the body of the vehicle such as by replacing steel body panels with plastic (like a Saturn, say) then you've made the vehicle safer for the poor sap that gets smashed into without changing the safety of the passengers inside the SUV. That SUVs are actually any safer for those inside them is a point that I still disagree with you completely about but for the purposes of this line of reasoning it's irrelevant.
This is exactly the sort of attitude that's caused the vehicle size arms race in North America. SUVs for example don't make you safer, they only make you feel safer. If an SUV runs into a mid-sized vehicle the chances of the occupants of said vehicle dying increase by a lot. SUVs also tend to roll over, causing fatalities that could easily have been avoided. A New York Times writer put together a book on this. I don't have a link handy but I'm sure you can find it if you look.
Environmentally, driving an SUV or Light Truck instead of a midsized sedan releases about five times the pollution. And maybe it's just me but I'm tailgated or cut off by an idiot in an SUV much much more frequently than by an idiot in a car.
As long as people keep buying them, though, the auto makers will keep making them. I wish people would take a look at what their "safety" is costing everyone.
IIS has the biggest market share on web servers? Since when? According to every statistic I've seen, Apache has the biggest market share.
Also, your line of events ending in everyone adopting Linux and ditching NT is highly unlikely. Most of the NT boxes I've seen are run by morons - morons work cheap(er).
The earth has finite limits to what you can take out of it and finite limits to what you can return to it. Using resources generates waste - and I'm not talking about toxic waste or nuclear waste or anything like that; CO2 and O2 are both waste from different processes that happen on Earth, for example. Given that raw material + energy in = useful material + work + material waste + waste energy out for any system:
Using technology to maintain the rate at which raw materials and energy flow into the system means maintaining the level at which waste materials and waste energy flow out. There are two major theories about the potential outcome. One is that everything will be fine because we'll find a way around the problem using technology and ingenuity. The other is that wastes will build up and eventually the system will reach a breaking point. I doubt the former because waste has to go somewhere. I fear the latter because people are selfish.
If you're going for "most kids won't know the answer", a good one is a cart with a fan mounted on it so that the fan points towards the front of the cart to create an internal force. Ask them if they think the cart will move or not. They'll probably say yes. Flip it on and prove to them it won't move. Then turn the fan around so it points behind the cart, flip it on and watch it go.
Another effective one is lifting a board by using a pool of water that gets frozen by the endothermic reaction in the beaker on top of it. I've seen that one twice.
That's strange that you'd say it's slow on your AMD 333 because I run it on a Pentium 166 128 MB laptop and it flies, especially compared to IE. Also, the page rendering is a lot faster than Mozilla for me.
Don't just randomly predict it will fail. It's obvious that you haven't used Phoenix. Try it first before you condemn it to failure.
So far I've found Phoenix is better than every other browser I've tried. As a matter of fact, I'm using it to post this right now. It's my primary browser and I can't see switching back to IE or Mozilla. If you do decide to try it though, watch 0.2 for password manager crashes, though. It's only crashed twice (I've been using it for almost a month now) but that's what has caused it to crash both times.
The thing about Phoenix is it does everything I want it to do even without addons. It even does some things I wouldn't switch browsers just to have that make it a lot nicer. I installed mouse gestures. I tried them and I liked them. I installed the radial context menus. I tried them and I hated them. Poof. Disabled. Never have to worry about 'em again. It has a configurable toolbar, something Mozilla has been sorely lacking.
And it's fast. It's wickedly fast. I can't see myself switching back.
I don't know what rock you're living under but if you log on to Direct Connect you can download entire albums encoded as one MP3 - sometimes as high as 320kbps. Of the last four that I've looked for, three have been there. Two of them were even ripped from Vinyl.
I tend to agree with you that there are a lot more MS coders out there than many people on/. seem to think, but...
HELLLLOOOOOOO?!?!
Running ASP doesn't make you a Microsoft shop! Just because Microsoft popularised it (they may have invented it but I doubt it - insert research laziness disclaimer here) doesn't mean they're the only ones who support it. *whips out the clue bat*
Maybe you haven't been paying attention but Microsoft only supports standards as long as they contribute to the growth of their monopoly. That whole embrace / extend / dominate cycle. It would be challenging to embrace and extend XML, I'll give you that, but if anyone can think of a way to do it, it's going to be them - that's the basis of their business model, after all...
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, my understanding is limited but I'm not completely braindead. Setting R to 0 was a mistake that I overlooked - I meant to set R to 1. You didn't read my responses to previous posts, it seems.
I don't claim to know much about Electrical Engineering - that's not what I'm studying. I was trying to be helpful but I obviously don't know enough. I wasn't trying to sound authoritative or cocky.
I also don't claim to know a lot about Software Engineering - I'm only in Second Year. This sums up what I know about software design:
Step 1: Help the user determine what the problem they are trying to solve is.
Step 2: Determine the best tool for the job.
Step 3: If the best tool is an algorythmic one, break the problem down into smaller and smaller parts until you've got a whole pile of single tasks.
Step 5: Design an algorythm to perform each task. Test thoroughly and examine all cases.
Step 6: Implement your algorythms on the computer if it's appropriate.
Step 7: Test the fuck out of your implementations then assemble them into a program. Then test the fuck out of the program.
Step 7: Let the user play with the program and get their feedback.
Step 8: Repeat steps 1 - 7 as necessary.
I hope that shows you that I know something about SE and that I'm not completely full of shit. I know I've still got a lot to learn.
Firstly, I'm not a graduate.
Secondly, if I were a graduate, I wouldn't give out advice like this - it makes people think it's good advice. I didn't say this was good advice. Actually I said that it probably wasn't good advice (don't try this at home). Not only that but I also know that anything I say after I attain my degree can be held as the advice of an Engineer, even something like telling my neighbor that he ought to use screws to build his deck instead of nails. If my neighbor's deck collapses I can be held liable and lose my Engineering license.
The software engineering program I'm in is "real" engineering, as you put it, and I'm rather disappointed that you don't view software as being worthy of the engineering profession. My program was reviewed by the PEO and is accredited as an engineering discipline.
Absolutely I wouldn't put my own life in the hands of a piece of computer hardware I had built - I don't have the training to build hardware and I stated that in my original post. Similarly, I wouldn't build a building I had designed - I'm not a Civil Engineer. I would, on the other hand, put my life in the hands of a mission critical or failsafe piece of software that I wrote. Who wrote the software that's going to run my pacemaker when I'm older? I'd make damn sure it was a Software Engineer.
This is why I'm in software, not electrical.
Alright, in classic slashdot style I don't actually know that much about what I'm talking about but I did state that in the post.
About constant-current devices - as I mentioned, I'm applying my 1st Year physics course here which didn't cover this.
"You can substitute R = 0"
Bleh. Yes I screwed it up. I was thinking R = 1 which changes everything. Oops.
Incidentally we didn't cover rectifiers in my course either, I just happened to know that diodes direct current flow from tinkering with my electronics kit as a kid.
*mod self down*
You can fairly easily put the voltage from the rails up from 15V to 24V - all it takes is a resistor.
Just as a disclaimer, I'm a Software Engineering student applying my 1st Year Physics knowledge so this will get you the desired voltage but likely will not get you the desired effect. It could also burn out the camera, the train's motor, etc.. Don't try this at home unless you know what you're doing.
Voltage = Current times Resistance
V = I * R
Initial Voltage: 15 = I * R
Desired Voltage: 24 = I * (R + r)
You can substitute in R = 0 because the starting resistance is irrelevant, giving you a value of I = 15 for the first equation (note that this isn't the actual current in the circuit unless R = 0 which can't happen). Current (I) stays the same for the desired voltage so we have:
24 = 15 * (0 + r)
24 / 15 = r
r = 1.6 ohms
The (+/-) voltage problem can be eliminated using a diode which will restrict electron flow to one direction. I wouldn't suggest that you try this unless you know exactly how a diode works, however.
Maybe the wanker-in-an-SUV problem is just in Canada.
This reminds me of a story my friend whose father is a Police officer was telling me. It was about an incident with a woman driving down the road in a Jeep while talking on a cell phone.
Apparently she was completely oblivious because she drove right over a line of flares, through an accident scene and over a second line of flares without even noticing. That's bad enough but it gets worse.
Not only did she not notice the accident scene, she also failed to notice multiple police cars following her down the highway with lights and sirens on trying to get her to pull over. Brace yourself, it gets worse.
While she was on her merry romp through the accident scene she had managed to run over the body of someone who had died in the crash. The body caught on the undercarriage of the vehicle and she dragged this poor person down the road for almost twenty minutes before she noticed the flashing lights and sirens and hung up her phone. Her comment when she finally pulled over and the police asked her what the hell she was doing?
"Did I do something wrong, officer?"
I'm in an Engineering and Society program and just recently finished a course on sustainability. One of the topics of inquiry that we focused on was transportation and there are (Canadian) Government statistics that I believe came from the Drive Clean program (which attempts to reduce harmful vehicle emissions) that were pretty damning against SUVs. That's where the 5x the pollution statistic in my original post came from.
If the pollution statistics are accurate, it seems completely irresponsible for people to be driving SUVs because they're hurting everyone in the long run including themselves, most especially if they are riding alone and not hauling cargo.
I did a count on a busy road one day while I was waiting for the bus. Of the 50 or so vehicles I counted, less than 5 had more than one occupant and more than half were obscenely large SUVs or pickups.
Regarding structural strength and decreased mass, it's not the body of the vehicle that makes the difference safety-wise, it's the safety cage - the frame, the crumple zones, etc.. If you decrease the mass of the body of the vehicle such as by replacing steel body panels with plastic (like a Saturn, say) then you've made the vehicle safer for the poor sap that gets smashed into without changing the safety of the passengers inside the SUV. That SUVs are actually any safer for those inside them is a point that I still disagree with you completely about but for the purposes of this line of reasoning it's irrelevant.
This is exactly the sort of attitude that's caused the vehicle size arms race in North America. SUVs for example don't make you safer, they only make you feel safer. If an SUV runs into a mid-sized vehicle the chances of the occupants of said vehicle dying increase by a lot. SUVs also tend to roll over, causing fatalities that could easily have been avoided. A New York Times writer put together a book on this. I don't have a link handy but I'm sure you can find it if you look.
Environmentally, driving an SUV or Light Truck instead of a midsized sedan releases about five times the pollution. And maybe it's just me but I'm tailgated or cut off by an idiot in an SUV much much more frequently than by an idiot in a car.
As long as people keep buying them, though, the auto makers will keep making them. I wish people would take a look at what their "safety" is costing everyone.
Too bad emusic was bought out by Universal. I had an unlimited account there and liked the service but I refuse to give Vivendi my money.
Well, at least you're admitting your ignorance. How can you justify your opinion on something you haven't even researched?
So you're going to base your opinion of a law on a biased posting to a tech website? Please don't ever run for public office.
*cough*
IIS has the biggest market share on web servers? Since when? According to every statistic I've seen, Apache has the biggest market share.
Also, your line of events ending in everyone adopting Linux and ditching NT is highly unlikely. Most of the NT boxes I've seen are run by morons - morons work cheap(er).
I'm afraid you have your acro wrong.
RAID is Redundant Array of Independent Disks.
The earth has finite limits to what you can take out of it and finite limits to what you can return to it. Using resources generates waste - and I'm not talking about toxic waste or nuclear waste or anything like that; CO2 and O2 are both waste from different processes that happen on Earth, for example. Given that raw material + energy in = useful material + work + material waste + waste energy out for any system:
Using technology to maintain the rate at which raw materials and energy flow into the system means maintaining the level at which waste materials and waste energy flow out. There are two major theories about the potential outcome. One is that everything will be fine because we'll find a way around the problem using technology and ingenuity. The other is that wastes will build up and eventually the system will reach a breaking point. I doubt the former because waste has to go somewhere. I fear the latter because people are selfish.
Want to see something else funny?
Go to www.google.com and punch in %s. GNU project? Huh?
The most amusing part for me is that if I type "google" into the address bar I have attached to my taskbar, it brings up google and searches for %s.
I think they probably did it on purpose.
I don't mean to be a bastard but don't you mean "All your search are belong to us?"
What's even funnier is the result set that's returned:
= se arch&keyword=SEARCHKING+SUCKS+ASS
http://www.searchking.com/servlet/SearchKing?at
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It doesn't sound like you've used Phoenix. XUL doesn't slow it down one bit.
If you're going for "most kids won't know the answer", a good one is a cart with a fan mounted on it so that the fan points towards the front of the cart to create an internal force. Ask them if they think the cart will move or not. They'll probably say yes. Flip it on and prove to them it won't move. Then turn the fan around so it points behind the cart, flip it on and watch it go.
Another effective one is lifting a board by using a pool of water that gets frozen by the endothermic reaction in the beaker on top of it. I've seen that one twice.
I've used bare Mozilla and Phoenix default install on the same computer. Phoenix is a great deal faster.
Phoenix renders a lot faster than Mozilla. I haven't timed it but it's obvious from visual cues alone.
That's strange that you'd say it's slow on your AMD 333 because I run it on a Pentium 166 128 MB laptop and it flies, especially compared to IE. Also, the page rendering is a lot faster than Mozilla for me.
Don't just randomly predict it will fail. It's obvious that you haven't used Phoenix. Try it first before you condemn it to failure.
So far I've found Phoenix is better than every other browser I've tried. As a matter of fact, I'm using it to post this right now. It's my primary browser and I can't see switching back to IE or Mozilla. If you do decide to try it though, watch 0.2 for password manager crashes, though. It's only crashed twice (I've been using it for almost a month now) but that's what has caused it to crash both times.
The thing about Phoenix is it does everything I want it to do even without addons. It even does some things I wouldn't switch browsers just to have that make it a lot nicer. I installed mouse gestures. I tried them and I liked them. I installed the radial context menus. I tried them and I hated them. Poof. Disabled. Never have to worry about 'em again. It has a configurable toolbar, something Mozilla has been sorely lacking.
And it's fast. It's wickedly fast. I can't see myself switching back.
I don't know what rock you're living under but if you log on to Direct Connect you can download entire albums encoded as one MP3 - sometimes as high as 320kbps. Of the last four that I've looked for, three have been there. Two of them were even ripped from Vinyl.
I tend to agree with you that there are a lot more MS coders out there than many people on /. seem to think, but...
HELLLLOOOOOOO?!?!
Running ASP doesn't make you a Microsoft shop! Just because Microsoft popularised it (they may have invented it but I doubt it - insert research laziness disclaimer here) doesn't mean they're the only ones who support it. *whips out the clue bat*
Maybe you haven't been paying attention but Microsoft only supports standards as long as they contribute to the growth of their monopoly. That whole embrace / extend / dominate cycle. It would be challenging to embrace and extend XML, I'll give you that, but if anyone can think of a way to do it, it's going to be them - that's the basis of their business model, after all...