Why not stop CO2 emissions, we're better off slowing CO2 output and being wrong about global warming
Think of what stopping CO2 emissions will do to those poor defenseless plants! You plant-killer! We at PETP (People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants) will not stand idly by and allow you to suffocate all those dandelions! Dandelions have feelings, too!
While bastardising an IBM Model M is almost inexcusable, this steampunk mod is quite nice. I have two model M keyboards that I use regularly.
Agreed. Typing on one (1984) right now, also have an '87 model with its original stuck-on-when-new WordPerfect cheat sheet. My third PC/AT keyboard is a 1983 Compaq Deskpro 286 keyboard; it's two-tone brown and looks utterly ridiculous sitting in front of an LCD monitor and beside an optical mouse. It's just as comfortable as a Model M for just the exact opposite reasons.
BTW, M users - cleaning tip, one keyboard at a time, and don't try this unless you actually OWN your washing machine. Take off all the keycaps, or, better still, all the keys leaving simply the springs in place. Put them into the washing machine along with a dirty sweater or something. Do not use a full load of laundry, a cap will get lost in the bottom of a sock or a pocket or something, and it will take you weeks to find it. Wash as a small load on warm water. Remove all the caps, blot them on a towel, and leave to dry. Carefully shake out the sweater (watching for caps!) and hang it to dry. Vacuum the keyboard, watching to ensure all the springs remain where they belong. Once the caps are all dry, stick 'em back on and enjoy the fact that your M looks brand new again. The article of clothing is essential, as it scrubs them during the washing cycle. Doing this on your own washer is essential, if a key or cap goes missing, you'll want to know it didn't end up in someone else's laundry. I have done this every couple of years on each of my Ms, using an ancient Maytag top-loader, and they always come out perfectly. It beats the hell out of scrubbing each key with a toothbrush.
Anyway, at least this schmuck did something interesting and apparently well-executed, even though he destroyed two antique typewriters and one M to do it.
It's called fluidics, and it's decades old. It uses compressed air or water to create logic circuits.
Yeah, I think the only real innovation here is describing the gates by Boolean concepts. His other accomplishment is no moving parts - except, of course, the fluid, I was expecting check balls and things; his system would probably work extremely well under very controlled pressure conditions... but I can't imagine there's much tolerance for real-world conditions or capacity for fan-out from the gates. Having said that, it's still a neat project. Kinda like the digital alarm clock I'm building using nothing but relays.
Automatic transmissions have used hydraulic computers since their genesis in the late 1940s. Until electronically-controlled transmissions became widespread in the 1980s, automatic transmissions universally had a maze of check valves, pressure-operated cylindrical valves and diaphragms in order to select gear. It was called the valve body, and it is probably the most terrifying part of a car to have scattered across your workbench - orders of magnitude worse than even a California emissions 1983 Rochester Quadrajet. Inputs include selected gear, downshift linkage, engine speed, tailshaft speed. Outputs are a set of lines which are pulled "hi" (in pressure not voltage!) to engage bands on the outsides of planetary gearsets and therefore engage a given gear.
Absolute nightmare. But they worked quite reliably - the valve bodies, anyway. The transmission itself was sometimes another matter (see hydraulic-controlled GM TH-200, Hondamatic, etc.). Ford C4 and C6 were one of the few to have a valve body design flaw - in Park, accumulated pressure would engage the reverse bands, causing the familiar scene from Cops: a Ford product reversing in driverless circles until it hits something. Shut off the engine when you get out of the driver's seat, and set your parking brake.
I think we first need to ask who will actually get the money. Sure, they say its for the artists...
The stupid thing is that these taxes are going directly to support Canadian artists from copyright infringement. University students aren't trading DVDs full of Tragically Hip and Rita McNeil music, they're trading decent music. I mean, if Cancon acts were so good, it wouldn't require laws to make Canadian radio stations play them. Except the CBC; they get to play anything they want because they know that the three people who listen are either quadriplegics who can't reach the tuning knob, or have sufficiently advanced Alzheimer's as to have forgotten what the tuning knob does.
Oh well. Since I'm forced to pay this stupid tax to back up my mail server or the pictures I've taken with my digital camera, I'll damned well make sure I download enough to get my money's worth. Currently, there's a fat woman singing "She's called Nova Scotia".
Overages, OR underages, are bad. Yet, it's an _estimate_. This is a tool to get reasonable accuracy (so it's claimed) for doing estimates.
Heh... I'm sure the parent's estimates are acCtually about as good as his accuracy.
You just replied to a guy who probably thinks that screwing a new case fan into the existing holes constitutes building something. Or that assembling Ikea furniture makes him handy. To dismiss such a product, he's clearly never actually built anything, whether it be a renovated bathroom, a waterblock for a CPU cooler, or a stretched frame for his Jeep Cherokee Limousine.
99.5% accurate? Okay, I'll round up a whole percent. Worst overages would therefore be buying 101.5 feet of fascia when I needed but 100, and it saved me the labor (and risk) of climbing the ladder and measuring the width of my eaves to make sure it was right. Dude clearly has no idea why there are always large dumpsters at construction sites, and how this would if anything only serve to reduce the waste.
My favourite quote from engineering school: "Measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with an axe"
And if you designed it (measured and calculated!) right from the start, it'll survive the tolerances inherent to both mass production and real-world usage. I love that saying, because I get so tired of dealing with people who come up with designs which are beautiful but impossible to actually build.
If they are providing an un-grounded adapter then they should be sure that no external metal components can connect to the line neutral, because while that should ideally be at ground potential, the power spec provides for the possibility of it floating.
In Canada, any low voltage external power supplies like one ones these notebooks probably use - and every other wall-wart or variant thereof - has to be a Class II rated supply. In other words, isolated from the line rather than referenced to line, and both short-circuit (output) and impedance protected (input) to assure that the output current cannot cause a fire and that the input current cannot burn the transformer. Look for the term "Class II" and a CSA or cUL mark (nb. UL mark with a small C to the left). I would very much assume that American rules are the same.
I seem to remember that Class II provides provision for some means to eliminate accumulated charge from the device, though such a provision would be in the form of multiple multi-megaohm resistors between primary and secondary, and exists to reduce static accumulation rather than anything else. The current possible between the user and a ground would be well below the human threshold and within range of only the most sensitive equipment - certainly not a 20,000-ohms-per-volt meter like you're going go find on a typical field service bench, but the lab-grade stuff used in component-level repairs.
In this day and age, I cannot imagine that the supply wouldn't be Class 2 rated.
Ergo, Dell must have gotten a bad batch of power supplies, ones which apparently failed the "HI POT" (HI POTential between primary and secondary) test.
Also, I'd like to see the testing conditions. Phantom or induced voltages along lengths of network cables could induce voltages with respect to ground, and they'd ironically be eliminated if the supply wasn't Class II rated (TV sets are often a great example of this, as you get a buzz from the coax as you try to connect it to the back of the set). ESD from external monitors. Remember that the only way to properly ground one of these systems is to connect it to a grounded peripheral (monitor, USB printer, legacy serial or parallel device) plugged into THE SAME OUTLET.
Bullshit. There are also *lots* of computers with specialized hardware which is impossible/difficult/expensive to replace. Engine management computers I've repaired on ships tended to be HP Vectra 486 machines with custom modifications. This is basically the ECM; as in your car, it controls the fuel injection... except the engine is a 4-storey-tall diesel. They do everything from reading sensors and adjusting parameters to logging conditions. When you've got a modified (ie. manually-done solder connections all over the board) Vectra controlling diesel fuel in gallons-per-minute quantities, you spend time troubleshooting and repairing it as it needs. Especially when the replacement hacked Vectra is in the $40,000 range, and each day the ship sits at dock waiting for parts is $10k+ in port and fuel fees, $5k+ in labor (bored sailor) fees, and $40k+ in lost revenues. And that's a small ship.
Same sort of scenario if a specialized PC fails and takes out an assembly line or a steel mill or even a grocery store.
I built my own capacitor ESR tester, and I have repaired dozens of motherboards with it. Knowing how to do that (rather than just simple board replacement) is a terrific way to earn gratitude alongside with bucks. (Fixing stuff with homebuilt test equipment also tends to make the customer think you're Einstein.)
And you think the XP license is restrictive? (Well, it is, given its market.) You should see some of the stuff - intelligent dongles on parallel ports, software which quizzes you about the hardware on which it was installed, etc.
He's running kernel benchmarks on a laptop? Looks like half the things he was measuring were I/O bound? On a laptop?
Point well taken, but I have no problem with this.
At least the notebook computer was built by one manufacturer, who (presumably) ensured that all the components played well with each other. Other than that, I don't care what machine he ran it on - an AST Pentium I would have been fine with me.
The notebook may be slower than a comparable prefab desktop or server, but we still had A/B comparisons taken on the same hardware.
Despite the slower IO, it also more accurately simulates bottlenecks seen in older hardware, or hardware where the BIOS has been "tweaked" by a "tuner" who knows nothing about what he's doing (we've all seen hardware like this, my favorite was back in the days of the 486, someone who wasn't smart enough to know how to buy jeans which fit properly had disabled the cache because it "slowed him down").
Remember, we have an A/B comparison. Performance differences between kernel versions should scale by the same linear coefficient as the comparison between this notebook and whatever else you plan on running on.
And furthermore, notebooks are a very common platform today, and their usage does reflect a real world condition under which any new kernel will have to operate.
Actually, Linden Labs had to permit or deny use of their logo, or risk losing the trademark. This is a clever move by them both from the legal side and the PR it generates.
Yeah, I have no idea what the hell Linden Labs is, or what this First Life/Second Life thing is all about. But, based on this, I know I like Linden Labs. I think I'm going to hit Wikipedia right now.
Has CA considered the cost of mass noncompliance with recycling regulations when people are forced to buy CFLs?
Hell no!
Energy conservation and environmental protection are scientific pursuits. This sort of bill is proposed only by the uncircumcised calculus-ignorant arts majors. "There's mercury in fluorescent lights? Huh? There might be lead in the solder in the ballasts? HUH? The ballasts don't grow on Mother Earth Trees where they bask under rainbows and hug puppies?"
Yeah, because it'll save so much gas when I make two trips in my car (30 MPG) to pick up what I could in one trip with my SUV (25 MPG).
Very good point, and an argument missed by the sort of moron who believes in banning incandescent light bulbs - they are the same people as who want to ban SUVs, of course.
An adjunct to your point, we must remember that real SUVs are based on pickup truck chassis, making them a hell of a lot more durable than unibody cars and poseur SUVs (like the RAV-4 and CRV). Let's say I'm building a deck. First time I load enough bags of cement into the back of a Corolla, the back doors won't close anymore because the structure is bent. With a real SUV, pickup or van, the suspension bottoms out, and no permanent damage is done.
The SUV is ideal for several reasons, the least of which are the "need" for 4x4 drivetrains:
More durable for hauling and towing - ideal for people who need a car capable of occasional heavy-duty use, but cannot afford (purchase price, insurance, taxes, registration) to keep a car for daily use and a truck for occasional use. This niche used to be filled by the full-size RWD American station wagon, until CAFE rules killed those (and not surprisingly the SUV became popular as a replacement).
It's a large station wagon. CAFE killed the Caprice Classic and Crown Victoria wagons of yore, but they were still the best way for soccer moms to get around.
People who like rear-wheel-drive. Real SUVs (not poseur SUVs) are universally RWD when the transfer case is in 2WD mode. Most people who know anything about cars will note that police forces almost universally drive RWD vehicles, because with a little practice, the handling is more predictable. They will also note that all professional race cars (from Indy to NASCAR to NHRA) are RWD, for that very reason (among others).
Tall people. I don't fit comfortably into most cars. Cars I do fit into are Deloreans (John Z was my height), Fieros, Chevettes, and Plymouth Valiants/Dodge Darts. I do not fit comfortably (either hitting the headliner or pedals are in the wrong place or my knees are on the dashboard) into Honda Civics or Accords, Chevrolet Cavaliers, Ford Focii? Focuses?, etc. OTOH, I fit comfortably into all full-size American pickups, SUVs and vans I've ever driven.
Modifications. Being of traditional body-on-frame construction, the body isn't load-bearing and can be easily modified to suit the needs of the handicapped, while unibody design is hard to modify for fear of damaging a load-bearing member.
As for me, I'll stick with my 1976 Dodge Ram pickup truck, both for fun and for hauling. For daily driving, a little Neon is all I need: from the sparse field of cars into which I fit, that is one of them.
Now, back to CFLs: *they* should be banned. Sure, their electrical efficiency is far greater than incandescents, but what about the energy consumption and environmental damage from manufacturing? Fortunately, this universally occurs in China; since it's not in California, the Sierra Club doesn't know what goes into the ballasts, or ignores the pollution and energy consumption because it occurs in China. Furthermore, the arts majors who typically get involved with such dubious groups also tend to lack even the most basic understanding of technology or chemistry, like the fact that all fluorescent lights contain mercury, and mercury is bad.
Want a decent law? Force these people to wear helmets.
I'm pretty sure I am remembering this right. Dad was a programmer a long, long time ago, and I only know this process from him telling it to me.
Sounds about right, if the drum memory and RAM weren't available to him (maybe filled up by running the assembler and storing his program during assembly). Paper tape (instead of punch cards) might have been helpful, since paper tape tended to jam less often.
Note that, having said that, I was born in 1974. I *do* have experience with some really early machines, but it's always been in the context of it being an artifact - sheer pleasure of connecting with history, the same reason people ride horses or drive Volkswagens.
I well remember moving to 8 inch, then 5.25 inch floppies. My wife made me a few shirts with extra big pockets which could take a couple of 5.25s.
Punch cards... now there's something I missed out on, though I've used them mostly as part of my antique technology hobby.
My first computer was a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99/4A. When I finally saved up enough off my paper route to get a disk controller, my first floppies were obsolete 8" soft-sectored disks and a drive which I got from a junked machine in my high school's electronics lab. The TI never supported 8" drives, but the old drive I got was regular MFM and plugged right in. Of course, it needed its own 120V supply to run the motor. And of course, I didn't know then that it was MFM or what... I just knew that the connector was the same size and there were the same sorts of DIP terminating resistors as I'd seen on 5.25" drives - in retrospect, I was very lucky not to let the magic smoke out of my new controller.
I was so thrilled to have 90k on an 8" diskette.
Eventually, of course, I got TI-branded Shugart 5.25" full-height SSSD drives (90k each, which was what the TI thought it was formatting all along), then a 3.5" drive and a half-height 5.25" drive (both allowed me 180k), then a hacked controller allowing me to use a full DSDD (360k) on each diskette. On a TI-99/4A, and before the advent of digital media like we have now, this was like a hard disk drive: a single diskette often stayed in the drive for months.
[sigh]
I still have all that hardware, and I fire it up for a round of Parsec every now and then.
I can think of a lot of ways to measure a cities intelligence, however measuring their broadband penetration isn't one of them.
Broadband penetration is a good thing and worthy of points in the city's favor. ANY Internet access is worthy of points. However, far more important is counting the number of lottery tickets sold in the city. If it's greater than 100, deduct all points for universities or broadband penetration. People who buy stuff advertised in spam should be cause for castration of the entire population of that city.
Now, I'm currently stuck back living in Ottawa (which I utterly detest despite being my "home town"), and there are lottery kiosks all over the place, probably more than 100 of them in the city, to say nothing of tickets sold. Therefore, these people don't know basic math. Therefore, nix all points for broadband penetration or the three universities and (seven? eight?) colleges in the city.
Yes, because it's currently using your upper lip for toilet paper.
The moment you hear terms like "digital inclusion" - and Ottawa is listed as a "great city" by any measure (and Ottawa is my hometown and current residence, but Ottawa is a fetid shithole that most people escape from when they turn 18) - then you know the whole thing is a bullshit waste of money.
In all fairness, though, Waterloo deserves any kudos it gets, even from a source as questionable as this one. Waterloo is a great city.
Ottawa-Gatineau? The worst ten years of my life were the four years I lived there. There are a few high tech firms with some smart dudes, but most of the people are either boring, clueless morons with high school educations working as clerks for the federal government, or lying, thieving politicians and their cronies.
The idiot who modded you down has clearly never been to this fetid hole.
I was raised in Ottawa from 1978 onward. In 1995, I got the hell out and went to Toronto, which is actually a livable city. In 2001, the economy tanked and I came back here, moved back in with my parents, and then went back to school.
Ottawa is the stupidest, most horrible, most backwards, most desolate, and most erroneously self-important shithole I've ever been to. Look at the layout of the city - tell me how it was possible to make every trip in this city so circuitous? (It takes work to do such bad urban planning!) The people are arrogant (PARIS is friendly in comparison!) yet vastly under-accomplished (mostly government clerks who play solitaire all day). I mean, come on, they elected Larry O'Brien, a man who outwardly lied in his campaign and had no political experience!
As a demonstration of erroneous self-importance, Ottawa claims to be home to the "World's Longest Skating Rink" - even if that were true, it wouldn't be impressive - anyone who is bored enough could build a longer skating rink. But in this case, it's not a skating rink, it's a fscking CANAL. The Erie Canal could blow Ottawa right out of the water if New York State cared to. Another silly NCC tourist gimmick - if they were any more expensive and ineffectual, they'd have to call themselves OC Transpo. Hell, Chicago should just wait for Lake Michigan to ice up around the edges and call that the world's largest skating rink - the claim would be every bit as valid as Ottawa's.
As a demonstration of stupidity, this city is populated by people who (by and large) choose to live here, rather than being forced to as a victim of circumstance. Now look at the climate in Ottawa - massively colder than Toronto or Montreal. These people choose to live in a place where you can die from simply going outside - that's stupid.
I can't wait to leave this city and never, ever come back. Ever. For any reason. Seriously. And this is "my hometown", where I went Kindergarten through High School and now University. I'm supposed to feel "hometown proud". I would happily bulldoze this city flat. I would rather live in 1977 Detroit than spend another minute in Ottawa.
Words simply cannot express my hatred of this city and its inhabitants.
How do we let the politicians know this is an issue for us?
Turn off their spam filters for a couple of days.
I used to do tech support for a federal court judge. He was hearing a case about spam, and wanted my opinions on the situation. I explained to him that every e-mail, spam or not, incurs a certain amount of overhead - bandwidth, processing time, etc. Then I explained that every spam requires CPU time to filter out, and that it cost our organization $x to support the spam that was eventually filtered out. And that for every spam which got through, over 97% didn't.
Then I shut off his spam filters.
A few hours later, he called me and begged me to turn his filters back on. Needless to say, the trial went our way. Unfortunately, the spammer was only small potatoes.
Not true. Macrovision works (as I understand it) by making the auto-brightness-adjust of the VCR go nuts.
Pretty close. It's actually the record level, which affects all aspects of the video signal stored on the tape.
Magnetic tape recording devices need to set their record levels so that the tape comes as close as possible to being saturated. Too low, bad signal to noise ratio. Too high, distortion - clipping in audio, and "white clip" (a lack of contrast on bright objects) in video.
VHS uses the vertical blanking interval (that black horizontal bar when the vertical hold control is set wrong) to set the record level - the video is a known state in this bar; it should be black. Some older VHS VCRs did it in other ways, and Betamax/U-Matic also set the record level in other ways. Most professional machines use a manual record level adjustment.
Macrovision simply adds flickering white blocks into the vertical blanking interval. As a result, the VCR's record levels are set wrong. Flashing and flickering are easily implemented by playing with the Macrovision pulse levels during the movie - the VCR's record levels go way off and the recording becomes unwatchable.
When you're simply feeding the signal through the VCR, chances are that the VCR is adjusting the video levels to the TV by using its record level setting mechanism, but since the TV is a lot less sensitive to the variations in signal strength (thanks to an AGC circuit built into the TV), it is not affected anywhere near as drastically as the magnetic tape. This is why you *might* be able to use your VCR as a modulator for your DVD player, but it is by no means guaranteed.
Some older TVs (typically pre-1980) will be affected by Macrovision, typically because their sync separator circuits require the black lines to "recalibrate" after the vertical sync pulse - this is the reason why the NTSC system had such a large vertical blanking interval in the first place. With the advent of non-professional and sometimes unstable video sources (VCRs are notoriously unstable, since the sync they generate depends on tape speed and other mechanical factros), TV set designers were forced to improve sync circuits.
Macrovision is easy enough to remove - after the vertical sync pulse, ensure that there are 22 lines of blackness separated only by horizontal sync pulses, then pass all lines until the next vertical sync pulse completely transparently. An LM1881 sync separator IC, a simple TTL counter and an op-amp are all that is required to scrub Macrovision. My own reason for doing this is to be able to watch DVDs on my collection of 1950s TV sets, most of which lose vertical sync with a Macrovision signal. You could also use a TBC (TimeBase Corrector), since the TBC re-draws all the NTSC sync features as well as compensating for VCR jitter (even a professional analog VTR doesn't produce broadcast-quality sync or timing). I scored a used broadcast quality TBC a few years ago and it does wonders for the stability of my TV collection, especially being able to switch video sources and having the TBC ensure rock-solid sync through the transition.
Oh, and your DVD player actually inserts it when it generates the sync. DVD video files do not include either the horizontal or vertical blanking interval (for one thing, it would waste space on the disc); these NTSC requirements are generated by the DVD player's electronics, and the Macrovision signal in the vertical blanking interval is instead enabled or disabled by an instruction from the disc. I'd also imagine that DVD recorders are susceptible to Macrovision; to enforce copy protection and for design convenience, it would be easy enough to use the vertical blanking interval to set their own black levels just like a VHS VCR.
How the hell do you remanufacture a PN junction!!?
With the same smelter used to create that wafer. A fact mysteriously absent from environmentalist doctrine, since they're too stupid (or scientifically ignorant) to realize that it had to be made, and manufacturing costs were incurred. They're uncircumcised, therefore they're idiots: ignore them.
Its a new profit model. Make things that suck and get big money in service contracts. General Motors is kicking this business plan into high gear more than ever. Odd placement of fuel tank,
Not a regular service item, and as long as it's protected from collisions, it can go anywhere convenient. In the Pontiac Fiero, it was between the driver and passenger seat - safest place in the car; if a collision ruptures the tank, you'd have been dead anyway.
Now consider a Toyota Previa minivan. Where's the fuel tank? Hell, where's the motor? What's this, I have to take out the seats to check the oil?
limited visibility through windows,
Acura Integra. Last time I drove one, backing the damned thing out of the driveway was nearly impossible.
clumsy controls,
Like putting the headlight switch on the turn signal arm, so that you can add complexity to the switch and add relays to add cost and increase points of failure. Rather than simply installing a larger switch on the dashboard where anyone who isn't a moron would expect it to be. I was so happy when a car rental company didn't have the Neon I'd reserved and gave me a Nissan instead and had to figure out where the damned headlight switch was.
Oh yeah, and what's up with having to hold up the door handle to lock the door? If it's somehow designed to remind you not to lock your keys in your car, I don't understand how it would. Besides, I'm smart enough to have gotten into a very simple habit: never close a car door unless you're holding your keys. Been driving for 16 years - last locked myself out of my car 15 years ago.
interior makes noises and rattles,
ALL cheap cars do that. Funny thing is that my friend's 2001 Civic is somehow louder and more creaky than my 1980 Chevette ever was.
Now, go compare a Cadillac and a Lexus, both with about the same mileage since body rattles are a function of age, and tell me which one squeaks more and is noisier. I guarantee the Cadillac will have less wind noise: you see, it's actually got window frames which help seal the doors better, and have been used in the vast majority of luxury cars and sedans since the dawn of the horseless carriage, and is apparently a concept Lexus apparently doesn't get.
suspension hardware wears out quickly,
If you abuse it. Usually, balljoints, top plates and tie rod ends last the life of the car. And in general, GM and Ford's balljoints are bolted in, Chrysler's are screwed in. I don't, as a rule, like European cars because they tend to be more complicated than necessary (shift linkage in a 1995 Jetta, for example), but they tend to bolt in their balljoints, too. With Japanese stuff, they're more often pressed in, requiring an expensive specialty tool to change them. We can, of course, safely ignore Korean cars, because they're merely Japanese cars assembled without even the remotest semblance of common sense or mechanical aptitude.
repeated electronics failures and proprietary documentation,
Repeated? Any electronics can and will eventually fail, but repeated? Doubtful.
Proprietary documentation? Of course. Same with Japscrap and Eurotrash. That's like saying "GM cars suck because they only have four wheels!".
missing keyholes for locks where there should be,
In 1987, Toyota shipped over 10,000 Tercels which were missing the front passenger side speaker.
hard to replace maintenance items such as the battery underneath several layers of cruft,
Changed the serpentine belt in a 2002 Acura Integra lately? Seen where its front oxygen sensor is?
and the list goes on. Make your design require service!
You're clearly a moron who probably doesn't even own a decent socket set, let alone know anything about automotive mechanics. The Japanese were into impossible-to-fix designs long before Detroit or Europe.
I'm about to throw Firefox and yahoo.com out a fscking window, because Firefox intermittently ignores the scroll wheel on my mouse. Also happens on Slashdot.
Sorry, I had to get that off my chest, and when the scroll wheel stopped working and I was forced to go to the elevator bar to scroll past a story about how software sucks, well...
3. Every fundamental architectural improvement in CPU design has been integrated into the x86 family. Academics and designers alike said it was impossible, but x86 today enjoys all the benefits of RISC, pipelining, superscalar design, branch prediction, out-of-order execution, register renaming, symmetric multi-threading and multi-processing, real-time voltage and frequency adjustment...you name it, it has been implemented on an x68 processor.
Okay, let's substitute x86 with VHS, and let's substitute x86 improvements with VHS improvements:
3. Every fundamental architectural improvement in VCR design has been integrated into the VHS family. Academics and designers alike said it was impossible, but VHS today enjoys all the benefits of real time displays, automatic head cleaning, index searching, high fidelity audio, higher chrominance bandwidth, higher luminance bandwidth, Beta skip-scan, and a tape threading mechanism which is almost as reliable as the trusted Betamax U-Load...you name it, it has been implemented on a VHS VCR. (Yes, it is that stupid, and yes it is that after-the-fact. Intel, like JVC (VHS), waited for someone else to develop it, then figured out a mediocre way of tacking it on to their existing product line.)
Problem is: as with VHS vs. Beta, these are inelegant hacks applied after the fact to retain market share, rather than designed in (as standard features if not options), with the resulting kludge factor. But my hat is off to Intel: with the extra architectural complexity they've added, it's damned near amazing to me every time my computer actually POSTs. (Note that I run AMD, I may be forced to use the x86 mess for a variety of reasons, but I will damned well never patronize the merry band of fucking smegma-dicked morons who invented it. I wipe my ass with litte endians.)
Netflix will always be around. I can't imagine downloading a movie. recently I bought a movie from itunes store. I played it back in comparison with the actual dvd I had rented from netflix. The itunes movie quality is HORRIBLE.
You *really* need to find a good torrent site. Lots of complete DVD-ISOs are available, with full resolution and quality of a regular DVD. Download the ISO, watch the movie, and if it's the rare movie which is actually entertaining or intelligent, buy it to support the studios, crew and performers. Otherwise, rm. (Yes, I use P2P, but only for auditioning. I'm sick of renting or buying (either way shelling out money on) crap movies and/or music.) 40 Year Old Virgin, LOTR, Private Parts and Fight Club all ended up as part of my permanent collection thanks to this - I was *happy* to shell out the coin to have real DVDs.
Also I don't think they're going to be placing all older movies on this download service.
Playing devil's advocate in selection of available movies; it wouldn't surprise me if the selection process was this asinine: "Old movies? Of course not! No one who has ever heard of the Internet would be interested in watching Citizen Kane or The Lost Weekend! That would waste bandwidth for Snakes on a Plane!"
This download service will be come a complete failure to anyone who truely loves movies and actual film quality.
ACTUAL film quality on a DVD? Hell, even from any consumer monitor currently available? Not gonna happen. DVDs often have visible compression artifacts, and they all have limited resolution (even HD-DVD or whatever it's called). Film's resolution is limited more by the grain of the film, and it's pretty well near at least two orders of magnitude finer than any consumer monitor can handle. Indeed, the film's quality is often limited by the quality of lens on the camera and projector. Want film quality? Get a 35mm and a 70mm film projector.
The wiring to the main building was bad enough but using coat hangers to supply power to the small hut that housed the computer equipment was priceless.
Far East, right? For some reason, they have the same cultural aversion to proper wiring as Middle Easterners have to proper plumbing. [shaking head in belief but oh-my-God-what-can-you-do. At Home Depot, they refuse to sell stuff which the "associate" thinks will be used improperly where customer safety might be compromised. "No sir, 18-gauge lamp cord is not suitable to feed your dryer... Yes, it will generate heat, but I can guarantee it won't be in your dryer... 8/3 by code in Ontario.... Yes, I know it's more expensive, copper is a precious metal.... No, I will not cut you 18/2.... Sir, the building codes in Taiwan are highly suspect already, we've all seen in the news how many "modern" buildings collapsed last time you had a 6.1 quake; this is what ONTARIO requires.... well sir, you're more than welcome to take it up with the store manager, here's my phone, I'll dial 831 for you right now.... Oh, he met with you, laughed at you, and told you we wouldn't sell it to you? Yes, sir, that's why I like working at Home Depot, I know I tried to protect the little children in that house from burning up because you're an uncircumcised philistine. Have an adequate day."]
Moderators: If you don't believe me, Home Depot is hiring. After a week there, you WILL believe. Two years of home-built bidets using kitchen sink side-sprayers (note 1: kitchen sink side sprayers are controlled by the faucet, and it's assumed you're always there when they're on. note 2: kitchen sink side sprayers are rated only for the 5-10 PSI or so they see from aerator/diverter back pressure, not the full 50-75PSI of municipal water pressure) attached to municipal water pressure ("Why it burst? You sold me defective sprayer! What you mean I connect direct to city water? I cannot eh-do that, is connect straight to toilet. I come back from tree week in Yemen and find flood and notice taped to door. Now out $142,000 in flood damage to condo units beneath me! Insurance said I not use right part, they not pay! You pay! You pay!"). Two years of stoves burning through lamp cords ("why do I have to change my stove cord every time my wife uses more than one burner at once?"). Two years of actually having to work to convince people who *tell me they're plumbers* (ie. a guy who scraped together enough beer money to buy a pickup truck and a hammer and who now thinks he's a plumber - a trade which requires at least 5 years of schooling, people! Only 3 more to become a doctor!) that they can't use vinyl tubing to connect natural gas on a water heater for a little old lady who is dumb enough to let him into her house!
Find "Holmes on Homes". Shareaza, Torrents, etc. Download and watch a few episodes.
Jesus fucking wept.
Coathangers? I haven't seen them, but I'm a fervent believer.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not stop CO2 emissions, we're better off slowing CO2 output and being wrong about global warming
Think of what stopping CO2 emissions will do to those poor defenseless plants! You plant-killer! We at PETP (People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants) will not stand idly by and allow you to suffocate all those dandelions! Dandelions have feelings, too!
While bastardising an IBM Model M is almost inexcusable, this steampunk mod is quite nice. I have two model M keyboards that I use regularly.
Agreed. Typing on one (1984) right now, also have an '87 model with its original stuck-on-when-new WordPerfect cheat sheet. My third PC/AT keyboard is a 1983 Compaq Deskpro 286 keyboard; it's two-tone brown and looks utterly ridiculous sitting in front of an LCD monitor and beside an optical mouse. It's just as comfortable as a Model M for just the exact opposite reasons.
BTW, M users - cleaning tip, one keyboard at a time, and don't try this unless you actually OWN your washing machine. Take off all the keycaps, or, better still, all the keys leaving simply the springs in place. Put them into the washing machine along with a dirty sweater or something. Do not use a full load of laundry, a cap will get lost in the bottom of a sock or a pocket or something, and it will take you weeks to find it. Wash as a small load on warm water. Remove all the caps, blot them on a towel, and leave to dry. Carefully shake out the sweater (watching for caps!) and hang it to dry. Vacuum the keyboard, watching to ensure all the springs remain where they belong. Once the caps are all dry, stick 'em back on and enjoy the fact that your M looks brand new again. The article of clothing is essential, as it scrubs them during the washing cycle. Doing this on your own washer is essential, if a key or cap goes missing, you'll want to know it didn't end up in someone else's laundry. I have done this every couple of years on each of my Ms, using an ancient Maytag top-loader, and they always come out perfectly. It beats the hell out of scrubbing each key with a toothbrush.
Anyway, at least this schmuck did something interesting and apparently well-executed, even though he destroyed two antique typewriters and one M to do it.
It's called fluidics, and it's decades old. It uses compressed air or water to create logic circuits.
Yeah, I think the only real innovation here is describing the gates by Boolean concepts. His other accomplishment is no moving parts - except, of course, the fluid, I was expecting check balls and things; his system would probably work extremely well under very controlled pressure conditions... but I can't imagine there's much tolerance for real-world conditions or capacity for fan-out from the gates. Having said that, it's still a neat project. Kinda like the digital alarm clock I'm building using nothing but relays.
Automatic transmissions have used hydraulic computers since their genesis in the late 1940s. Until electronically-controlled transmissions became widespread in the 1980s, automatic transmissions universally had a maze of check valves, pressure-operated cylindrical valves and diaphragms in order to select gear. It was called the valve body, and it is probably the most terrifying part of a car to have scattered across your workbench - orders of magnitude worse than even a California emissions 1983 Rochester Quadrajet. Inputs include selected gear, downshift linkage, engine speed, tailshaft speed. Outputs are a set of lines which are pulled "hi" (in pressure not voltage!) to engage bands on the outsides of planetary gearsets and therefore engage a given gear.
Absolute nightmare. But they worked quite reliably - the valve bodies, anyway. The transmission itself was sometimes another matter (see hydraulic-controlled GM TH-200, Hondamatic, etc.). Ford C4 and C6 were one of the few to have a valve body design flaw - in Park, accumulated pressure would engage the reverse bands, causing the familiar scene from Cops: a Ford product reversing in driverless circles until it hits something. Shut off the engine when you get out of the driver's seat, and set your parking brake.
I think we first need to ask who will actually get the money. Sure, they say its for the artists...
The stupid thing is that these taxes are going directly to support Canadian artists from copyright infringement. University students aren't trading DVDs full of Tragically Hip and Rita McNeil music, they're trading decent music. I mean, if Cancon acts were so good, it wouldn't require laws to make Canadian radio stations play them. Except the CBC; they get to play anything they want because they know that the three people who listen are either quadriplegics who can't reach the tuning knob, or have sufficiently advanced Alzheimer's as to have forgotten what the tuning knob does.
Oh well. Since I'm forced to pay this stupid tax to back up my mail server or the pictures I've taken with my digital camera, I'll damned well make sure I download enough to get my money's worth. Currently, there's a fat woman singing "She's called Nova Scotia".
Overages, OR underages, are bad. Yet, it's an _estimate_. This is a tool to get reasonable accuracy (so it's claimed) for doing estimates.
Heh... I'm sure the parent's estimates are acCtually about as good as his accuracy.
You just replied to a guy who probably thinks that screwing a new case fan into the existing holes constitutes building something. Or that assembling Ikea furniture makes him handy. To dismiss such a product, he's clearly never actually built anything, whether it be a renovated bathroom, a waterblock for a CPU cooler, or a stretched frame for his Jeep Cherokee Limousine.
99.5% accurate? Okay, I'll round up a whole percent. Worst overages would therefore be buying 101.5 feet of fascia when I needed but 100, and it saved me the labor (and risk) of climbing the ladder and measuring the width of my eaves to make sure it was right. Dude clearly has no idea why there are always large dumpsters at construction sites, and how this would if anything only serve to reduce the waste.
My favourite quote from engineering school: "Measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with an axe"
And if you designed it (measured and calculated!) right from the start, it'll survive the tolerances inherent to both mass production and real-world usage. I love that saying, because I get so tired of dealing with people who come up with designs which are beautiful but impossible to actually build.
If they are providing an un-grounded adapter then they should be sure that no external metal components can connect to the line neutral, because while that should ideally be at ground potential, the power spec provides for the possibility of it floating.
In Canada, any low voltage external power supplies like one ones these notebooks probably use - and every other wall-wart or variant thereof - has to be a Class II rated supply. In other words, isolated from the line rather than referenced to line, and both short-circuit (output) and impedance protected (input) to assure that the output current cannot cause a fire and that the input current cannot burn the transformer. Look for the term "Class II" and a CSA or cUL mark (nb. UL mark with a small C to the left). I would very much assume that American rules are the same.
I seem to remember that Class II provides provision for some means to eliminate accumulated charge from the device, though such a provision would be in the form of multiple multi-megaohm resistors between primary and secondary, and exists to reduce static accumulation rather than anything else. The current possible between the user and a ground would be well below the human threshold and within range of only the most sensitive equipment - certainly not a 20,000-ohms-per-volt meter like you're going go find on a typical field service bench, but the lab-grade stuff used in component-level repairs.
In this day and age, I cannot imagine that the supply wouldn't be Class 2 rated.
Ergo, Dell must have gotten a bad batch of power supplies, ones which apparently failed the "HI POT" (HI POTential between primary and secondary) test.
Also, I'd like to see the testing conditions. Phantom or induced voltages along lengths of network cables could induce voltages with respect to ground, and they'd ironically be eliminated if the supply wasn't Class II rated (TV sets are often a great example of this, as you get a buzz from the coax as you try to connect it to the back of the set). ESD from external monitors. Remember that the only way to properly ground one of these systems is to connect it to a grounded peripheral (monitor, USB printer, legacy serial or parallel device) plugged into THE SAME OUTLET.
Only Old People Repair Computers Now
Bullshit. There are also *lots* of computers with specialized hardware which is impossible/difficult/expensive to replace. Engine management computers I've repaired on ships tended to be HP Vectra 486 machines with custom modifications. This is basically the ECM; as in your car, it controls the fuel injection... except the engine is a 4-storey-tall diesel. They do everything from reading sensors and adjusting parameters to logging conditions. When you've got a modified (ie. manually-done solder connections all over the board) Vectra controlling diesel fuel in gallons-per-minute quantities, you spend time troubleshooting and repairing it as it needs. Especially when the replacement hacked Vectra is in the $40,000 range, and each day the ship sits at dock waiting for parts is $10k+ in port and fuel fees, $5k+ in labor (bored sailor) fees, and $40k+ in lost revenues. And that's a small ship.
Same sort of scenario if a specialized PC fails and takes out an assembly line or a steel mill or even a grocery store.
I built my own capacitor ESR tester, and I have repaired dozens of motherboards with it. Knowing how to do that (rather than just simple board replacement) is a terrific way to earn gratitude alongside with bucks. (Fixing stuff with homebuilt test equipment also tends to make the customer think you're Einstein.)
And you think the XP license is restrictive? (Well, it is, given its market.) You should see some of the stuff - intelligent dongles on parallel ports, software which quizzes you about the hardware on which it was installed, etc.
He's running kernel benchmarks on a laptop? Looks like half the things he was measuring were I/O bound? On a laptop?
Point well taken, but I have no problem with this.
At least the notebook computer was built by one manufacturer, who (presumably) ensured that all the components played well with each other. Other than that, I don't care what machine he ran it on - an AST Pentium I would have been fine with me.
The notebook may be slower than a comparable prefab desktop or server, but we still had A/B comparisons taken on the same hardware.
Despite the slower IO, it also more accurately simulates bottlenecks seen in older hardware, or hardware where the BIOS has been "tweaked" by a "tuner" who knows nothing about what he's doing (we've all seen hardware like this, my favorite was back in the days of the 486, someone who wasn't smart enough to know how to buy jeans which fit properly had disabled the cache because it "slowed him down").
Remember, we have an A/B comparison. Performance differences between kernel versions should scale by the same linear coefficient as the comparison between this notebook and whatever else you plan on running on.
And furthermore, notebooks are a very common platform today, and their usage does reflect a real world condition under which any new kernel will have to operate.
Actually, Linden Labs had to permit or deny use of their logo, or risk losing the trademark. This is a clever move by them both from the legal side and the PR it generates.
Yeah, I have no idea what the hell Linden Labs is, or what this First Life/Second Life thing is all about. But, based on this, I know I like Linden Labs. I think I'm going to hit Wikipedia right now.
Has CA considered the cost of mass noncompliance with recycling regulations when people are forced to buy CFLs?
Hell no!
Energy conservation and environmental protection are scientific pursuits. This sort of bill is proposed only by the uncircumcised calculus-ignorant arts majors. "There's mercury in fluorescent lights? Huh? There might be lead in the solder in the ballasts? HUH? The ballasts don't grow on Mother Earth Trees where they bask under rainbows and hug puppies?"
Yeah, because it'll save so much gas when I make two trips in my car (30 MPG) to pick up what I could in one trip with my SUV (25 MPG).
Very good point, and an argument missed by the sort of moron who believes in banning incandescent light bulbs - they are the same people as who want to ban SUVs, of course.
An adjunct to your point, we must remember that real SUVs are based on pickup truck chassis, making them a hell of a lot more durable than unibody cars and poseur SUVs (like the RAV-4 and CRV). Let's say I'm building a deck. First time I load enough bags of cement into the back of a Corolla, the back doors won't close anymore because the structure is bent. With a real SUV, pickup or van, the suspension bottoms out, and no permanent damage is done.
The SUV is ideal for several reasons, the least of which are the "need" for 4x4 drivetrains:
As for me, I'll stick with my 1976 Dodge Ram pickup truck, both for fun and for hauling. For daily driving, a little Neon is all I need: from the sparse field of cars into which I fit, that is one of them.
Now, back to CFLs: *they* should be banned. Sure, their electrical efficiency is far greater than incandescents, but what about the energy consumption and environmental damage from manufacturing? Fortunately, this universally occurs in China; since it's not in California, the Sierra Club doesn't know what goes into the ballasts, or ignores the pollution and energy consumption because it occurs in China. Furthermore, the arts majors who typically get involved with such dubious groups also tend to lack even the most basic understanding of technology or chemistry, like the fact that all fluorescent lights contain mercury, and mercury is bad.
Want a decent law? Force these people to wear helmets.
I'm pretty sure I am remembering this right. Dad was a programmer a long, long time ago, and I only know this process from him telling it to me.
Sounds about right, if the drum memory and RAM weren't available to him (maybe filled up by running the assembler and storing his program during assembly). Paper tape (instead of punch cards) might have been helpful, since paper tape tended to jam less often.
Note that, having said that, I was born in 1974. I *do* have experience with some really early machines, but it's always been in the context of it being an artifact - sheer pleasure of connecting with history, the same reason people ride horses or drive Volkswagens.
I well remember moving to 8 inch, then 5.25 inch floppies. My wife made me a few shirts with extra big pockets which could take a couple of 5.25s.
Punch cards... now there's something I missed out on, though I've used them mostly as part of my antique technology hobby.
My first computer was a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99/4A. When I finally saved up enough off my paper route to get a disk controller, my first floppies were obsolete 8" soft-sectored disks and a drive which I got from a junked machine in my high school's electronics lab. The TI never supported 8" drives, but the old drive I got was regular MFM and plugged right in. Of course, it needed its own 120V supply to run the motor. And of course, I didn't know then that it was MFM or what... I just knew that the connector was the same size and there were the same sorts of DIP terminating resistors as I'd seen on 5.25" drives - in retrospect, I was very lucky not to let the magic smoke out of my new controller.
I was so thrilled to have 90k on an 8" diskette.
Eventually, of course, I got TI-branded Shugart 5.25" full-height SSSD drives (90k each, which was what the TI thought it was formatting all along), then a 3.5" drive and a half-height 5.25" drive (both allowed me 180k), then a hacked controller allowing me to use a full DSDD (360k) on each diskette. On a TI-99/4A, and before the advent of digital media like we have now, this was like a hard disk drive: a single diskette often stayed in the drive for months.
[sigh]
I still have all that hardware, and I fire it up for a round of Parsec every now and then.
I can think of a lot of ways to measure a cities intelligence, however measuring their broadband penetration isn't one of them.
Broadband penetration is a good thing and worthy of points in the city's favor. ANY Internet access is worthy of points. However, far more important is counting the number of lottery tickets sold in the city. If it's greater than 100, deduct all points for universities or broadband penetration. People who buy stuff advertised in spam should be cause for castration of the entire population of that city.
Now, I'm currently stuck back living in Ottawa (which I utterly detest despite being my "home town"), and there are lottery kiosks all over the place, probably more than 100 of them in the city, to say nothing of tickets sold. Therefore, these people don't know basic math. Therefore, nix all points for broadband penetration or the three universities and (seven? eight?) colleges in the city.
Yes, because it's currently using your upper lip for toilet paper.
The moment you hear terms like "digital inclusion" - and Ottawa is listed as a "great city" by any measure (and Ottawa is my hometown and current residence, but Ottawa is a fetid shithole that most people escape from when they turn 18) - then you know the whole thing is a bullshit waste of money.
In all fairness, though, Waterloo deserves any kudos it gets, even from a source as questionable as this one. Waterloo is a great city.
Ottawa-Gatineau? The worst ten years of my life were the four years I lived there. There are a few high tech firms with some smart dudes, but most of the people are either boring, clueless morons with high school educations working as clerks for the federal government, or lying, thieving politicians and their cronies.
The idiot who modded you down has clearly never been to this fetid hole.
I was raised in Ottawa from 1978 onward. In 1995, I got the hell out and went to Toronto, which is actually a livable city. In 2001, the economy tanked and I came back here, moved back in with my parents, and then went back to school.
Ottawa is the stupidest, most horrible, most backwards, most desolate, and most erroneously self-important shithole I've ever been to. Look at the layout of the city - tell me how it was possible to make every trip in this city so circuitous? (It takes work to do such bad urban planning!) The people are arrogant (PARIS is friendly in comparison!) yet vastly under-accomplished (mostly government clerks who play solitaire all day). I mean, come on, they elected Larry O'Brien, a man who outwardly lied in his campaign and had no political experience!
As a demonstration of erroneous self-importance, Ottawa claims to be home to the "World's Longest Skating Rink" - even if that were true, it wouldn't be impressive - anyone who is bored enough could build a longer skating rink. But in this case, it's not a skating rink, it's a fscking CANAL. The Erie Canal could blow Ottawa right out of the water if New York State cared to. Another silly NCC tourist gimmick - if they were any more expensive and ineffectual, they'd have to call themselves OC Transpo. Hell, Chicago should just wait for Lake Michigan to ice up around the edges and call that the world's largest skating rink - the claim would be every bit as valid as Ottawa's.
As a demonstration of stupidity, this city is populated by people who (by and large) choose to live here, rather than being forced to as a victim of circumstance. Now look at the climate in Ottawa - massively colder than Toronto or Montreal. These people choose to live in a place where you can die from simply going outside - that's stupid.
I can't wait to leave this city and never, ever come back. Ever. For any reason. Seriously. And this is "my hometown", where I went Kindergarten through High School and now University. I'm supposed to feel "hometown proud". I would happily bulldoze this city flat. I would rather live in 1977 Detroit than spend another minute in Ottawa.
Words simply cannot express my hatred of this city and its inhabitants.
How do we let the politicians know this is an issue for us?
Turn off their spam filters for a couple of days.
I used to do tech support for a federal court judge. He was hearing a case about spam, and wanted my opinions on the situation. I explained to him that every e-mail, spam or not, incurs a certain amount of overhead - bandwidth, processing time, etc. Then I explained that every spam requires CPU time to filter out, and that it cost our organization $x to support the spam that was eventually filtered out. And that for every spam which got through, over 97% didn't.
Then I shut off his spam filters.
A few hours later, he called me and begged me to turn his filters back on. Needless to say, the trial went our way. Unfortunately, the spammer was only small potatoes.
Not true. Macrovision works (as I understand it) by making the auto-brightness-adjust of the VCR go nuts.
Pretty close. It's actually the record level, which affects all aspects of the video signal stored on the tape.
Magnetic tape recording devices need to set their record levels so that the tape comes as close as possible to being saturated. Too low, bad signal to noise ratio. Too high, distortion - clipping in audio, and "white clip" (a lack of contrast on bright objects) in video.
VHS uses the vertical blanking interval (that black horizontal bar when the vertical hold control is set wrong) to set the record level - the video is a known state in this bar; it should be black. Some older VHS VCRs did it in other ways, and Betamax/U-Matic also set the record level in other ways. Most professional machines use a manual record level adjustment.
Macrovision simply adds flickering white blocks into the vertical blanking interval. As a result, the VCR's record levels are set wrong. Flashing and flickering are easily implemented by playing with the Macrovision pulse levels during the movie - the VCR's record levels go way off and the recording becomes unwatchable.
When you're simply feeding the signal through the VCR, chances are that the VCR is adjusting the video levels to the TV by using its record level setting mechanism, but since the TV is a lot less sensitive to the variations in signal strength (thanks to an AGC circuit built into the TV), it is not affected anywhere near as drastically as the magnetic tape. This is why you *might* be able to use your VCR as a modulator for your DVD player, but it is by no means guaranteed.
Some older TVs (typically pre-1980) will be affected by Macrovision, typically because their sync separator circuits require the black lines to "recalibrate" after the vertical sync pulse - this is the reason why the NTSC system had such a large vertical blanking interval in the first place. With the advent of non-professional and sometimes unstable video sources (VCRs are notoriously unstable, since the sync they generate depends on tape speed and other mechanical factros), TV set designers were forced to improve sync circuits.
Macrovision is easy enough to remove - after the vertical sync pulse, ensure that there are 22 lines of blackness separated only by horizontal sync pulses, then pass all lines until the next vertical sync pulse completely transparently. An LM1881 sync separator IC, a simple TTL counter and an op-amp are all that is required to scrub Macrovision. My own reason for doing this is to be able to watch DVDs on my collection of 1950s TV sets, most of which lose vertical sync with a Macrovision signal. You could also use a TBC (TimeBase Corrector), since the TBC re-draws all the NTSC sync features as well as compensating for VCR jitter (even a professional analog VTR doesn't produce broadcast-quality sync or timing). I scored a used broadcast quality TBC a few years ago and it does wonders for the stability of my TV collection, especially being able to switch video sources and having the TBC ensure rock-solid sync through the transition.
Oh, and your DVD player actually inserts it when it generates the sync. DVD video files do not include either the horizontal or vertical blanking interval (for one thing, it would waste space on the disc); these NTSC requirements are generated by the DVD player's electronics, and the Macrovision signal in the vertical blanking interval is instead enabled or disabled by an instruction from the disc. I'd also imagine that DVD recorders are susceptible to Macrovision; to enforce copy protection and for design convenience, it would be easy enough to use the vertical blanking interval to set their own black levels just like a VHS VCR.
How the hell do you remanufacture a PN junction!!?
With the same smelter used to create that wafer. A fact mysteriously absent from environmentalist doctrine, since they're too stupid (or scientifically ignorant) to realize that it had to be made, and manufacturing costs were incurred. They're uncircumcised, therefore they're idiots: ignore them.
Save the planet. Forget the bullshit of the ignorant and flush your toilet with gray water: http://www.glowingplate.com/ecology
Its a new profit model. Make things that suck and get big money in service contracts. General Motors is kicking this business plan into high gear more than ever. Odd placement of fuel tank,
Not a regular service item, and as long as it's protected from collisions, it can go anywhere convenient. In the Pontiac Fiero, it was between the driver and passenger seat - safest place in the car; if a collision ruptures the tank, you'd have been dead anyway.
Now consider a Toyota Previa minivan. Where's the fuel tank? Hell, where's the motor? What's this, I have to take out the seats to check the oil?
limited visibility through windows,
Acura Integra. Last time I drove one, backing the damned thing out of the driveway was nearly impossible.
clumsy controls,
Like putting the headlight switch on the turn signal arm, so that you can add complexity to the switch and add relays to add cost and increase points of failure. Rather than simply installing a larger switch on the dashboard where anyone who isn't a moron would expect it to be. I was so happy when a car rental company didn't have the Neon I'd reserved and gave me a Nissan instead and had to figure out where the damned headlight switch was.
Oh yeah, and what's up with having to hold up the door handle to lock the door? If it's somehow designed to remind you not to lock your keys in your car, I don't understand how it would. Besides, I'm smart enough to have gotten into a very simple habit: never close a car door unless you're holding your keys. Been driving for 16 years - last locked myself out of my car 15 years ago.
interior makes noises and rattles,
ALL cheap cars do that. Funny thing is that my friend's 2001 Civic is somehow louder and more creaky than my 1980 Chevette ever was.
Now, go compare a Cadillac and a Lexus, both with about the same mileage since body rattles are a function of age, and tell me which one squeaks more and is noisier. I guarantee the Cadillac will have less wind noise: you see, it's actually got window frames which help seal the doors better, and have been used in the vast majority of luxury cars and sedans since the dawn of the horseless carriage, and is apparently a concept Lexus apparently doesn't get.
suspension hardware wears out quickly,
If you abuse it. Usually, balljoints, top plates and tie rod ends last the life of the car. And in general, GM and Ford's balljoints are bolted in, Chrysler's are screwed in. I don't, as a rule, like European cars because they tend to be more complicated than necessary (shift linkage in a 1995 Jetta, for example), but they tend to bolt in their balljoints, too. With Japanese stuff, they're more often pressed in, requiring an expensive specialty tool to change them. We can, of course, safely ignore Korean cars, because they're merely Japanese cars assembled without even the remotest semblance of common sense or mechanical aptitude.
repeated electronics failures and proprietary documentation,
Repeated? Any electronics can and will eventually fail, but repeated? Doubtful.
Proprietary documentation? Of course. Same with Japscrap and Eurotrash. That's like saying "GM cars suck because they only have four wheels!".
missing keyholes for locks where there should be,
In 1987, Toyota shipped over 10,000 Tercels which were missing the front passenger side speaker.
hard to replace maintenance items such as the battery underneath several layers of cruft,
Changed the serpentine belt in a 2002 Acura Integra lately? Seen where its front oxygen sensor is?
and the list goes on. Make your design require service!
You're clearly a moron who probably doesn't even own a decent socket set, let alone know anything about automotive mechanics. The Japanese were into impossible-to-fix designs long before Detroit or Europe.
I totally agree that most software sucks.
I'm about to throw Firefox and yahoo.com out a fscking window, because Firefox intermittently ignores the scroll wheel on my mouse. Also happens on Slashdot.
Sorry, I had to get that off my chest, and when the scroll wheel stopped working and I was forced to go to the elevator bar to scroll past a story about how software sucks, well...
3. Every fundamental architectural improvement in CPU design has been integrated into the x86 family. Academics and designers alike said it was impossible, but x86 today enjoys all the benefits of RISC, pipelining, superscalar design, branch prediction, out-of-order execution, register renaming, symmetric multi-threading and multi-processing, real-time voltage and frequency adjustment...you name it, it has been implemented on an x68 processor.
Okay, let's substitute x86 with VHS, and let's substitute x86 improvements with VHS improvements:
3. Every fundamental architectural improvement in VCR design has been integrated into the VHS family. Academics and designers alike said it was impossible, but VHS today enjoys all the benefits of real time displays, automatic head cleaning, index searching, high fidelity audio, higher chrominance bandwidth, higher luminance bandwidth, Beta skip-scan, and a tape threading mechanism which is almost as reliable as the trusted Betamax U-Load...you name it, it has been implemented on a VHS VCR. (Yes, it is that stupid, and yes it is that after-the-fact. Intel, like JVC (VHS), waited for someone else to develop it, then figured out a mediocre way of tacking it on to their existing product line.)
Problem is: as with VHS vs. Beta, these are inelegant hacks applied after the fact to retain market share, rather than designed in (as standard features if not options), with the resulting kludge factor. But my hat is off to Intel: with the extra architectural complexity they've added, it's damned near amazing to me every time my computer actually POSTs. (Note that I run AMD, I may be forced to use the x86 mess for a variety of reasons, but I will damned well never patronize the merry band of fucking smegma-dicked morons who invented it. I wipe my ass with litte endians.)
Netflix will always be around. I can't imagine downloading a movie. recently I bought a movie from itunes store. I played it back in comparison with the actual dvd I had rented from netflix. The itunes movie quality is HORRIBLE.
You *really* need to find a good torrent site. Lots of complete DVD-ISOs are available, with full resolution and quality of a regular DVD. Download the ISO, watch the movie, and if it's the rare movie which is actually entertaining or intelligent, buy it to support the studios, crew and performers. Otherwise, rm. (Yes, I use P2P, but only for auditioning. I'm sick of renting or buying (either way shelling out money on) crap movies and/or music.) 40 Year Old Virgin, LOTR, Private Parts and Fight Club all ended up as part of my permanent collection thanks to this - I was *happy* to shell out the coin to have real DVDs.
Also I don't think they're going to be placing all older movies on this download service.
Playing devil's advocate in selection of available movies; it wouldn't surprise me if the selection process was this asinine: "Old movies? Of course not! No one who has ever heard of the Internet would be interested in watching Citizen Kane or The Lost Weekend! That would waste bandwidth for Snakes on a Plane!"
This download service will be come a complete failure to anyone who truely loves movies and actual film quality.
ACTUAL film quality on a DVD? Hell, even from any consumer monitor currently available? Not gonna happen. DVDs often have visible compression artifacts, and they all have limited resolution (even HD-DVD or whatever it's called). Film's resolution is limited more by the grain of the film, and it's pretty well near at least two orders of magnitude finer than any consumer monitor can handle. Indeed, the film's quality is often limited by the quality of lens on the camera and projector. Want film quality? Get a 35mm and a 70mm film projector.
The wiring to the main building was bad enough but using coat hangers to supply power to the small hut that housed the computer equipment was priceless.
Far East, right? For some reason, they have the same cultural aversion to proper wiring as Middle Easterners have to proper plumbing. [shaking head in belief but oh-my-God-what-can-you-do. At Home Depot, they refuse to sell stuff which the "associate" thinks will be used improperly where customer safety might be compromised. "No sir, 18-gauge lamp cord is not suitable to feed your dryer... Yes, it will generate heat, but I can guarantee it won't be in your dryer... 8/3 by code in Ontario.... Yes, I know it's more expensive, copper is a precious metal.... No, I will not cut you 18/2.... Sir, the building codes in Taiwan are highly suspect already, we've all seen in the news how many "modern" buildings collapsed last time you had a 6.1 quake; this is what ONTARIO requires.... well sir, you're more than welcome to take it up with the store manager, here's my phone, I'll dial 831 for you right now.... Oh, he met with you, laughed at you, and told you we wouldn't sell it to you? Yes, sir, that's why I like working at Home Depot, I know I tried to protect the little children in that house from burning up because you're an uncircumcised philistine. Have an adequate day."]
Moderators: If you don't believe me, Home Depot is hiring. After a week there, you WILL believe. Two years of home-built bidets using kitchen sink side-sprayers (note 1: kitchen sink side sprayers are controlled by the faucet, and it's assumed you're always there when they're on. note 2: kitchen sink side sprayers are rated only for the 5-10 PSI or so they see from aerator/diverter back pressure, not the full 50-75PSI of municipal water pressure) attached to municipal water pressure ("Why it burst? You sold me defective sprayer! What you mean I connect direct to city water? I cannot eh-do that, is connect straight to toilet. I come back from tree week in Yemen and find flood and notice taped to door. Now out $142,000 in flood damage to condo units beneath me! Insurance said I not use right part, they not pay! You pay! You pay!"). Two years of stoves burning through lamp cords ("why do I have to change my stove cord every time my wife uses more than one burner at once?"). Two years of actually having to work to convince people who *tell me they're plumbers* (ie. a guy who scraped together enough beer money to buy a pickup truck and a hammer and who now thinks he's a plumber - a trade which requires at least 5 years of schooling, people! Only 3 more to become a doctor!) that they can't use vinyl tubing to connect natural gas on a water heater for a little old lady who is dumb enough to let him into her house!
Find "Holmes on Homes". Shareaza, Torrents, etc. Download and watch a few episodes.
Jesus fucking wept.
Coathangers? I haven't seen them, but I'm a fervent believer.