there are people who will sell you a 'gigabit' USB 2.0 NIC; but that's because there are bad people, not because it works all that well
If I get ~9 megabytes per second in the real world from 100Mbps Ethernet on actual file transfers over the on-board Ethernet on my laptop, and ~30 megabytes-per-second on actual file transfers the USB 2.0 Ethernet adapter on that same laptop, then: Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0 should be a boon.
Not because performance is improved by a factor of 10 (as going from 100 to 1000Mbps Ethernet might theoretically be in an ideal situation), but because it's more than three times faster than what I could do before, and I spend 1/3 the time waiting for stuff to move from A to B.
And if I can plug in a cheap widget that gets me 3x the speed, no matter what the platform or the problem: As long as speed is an issue, I'm sold: 3x is always better than 1x, even if 10x is ideal and 3x is less than 10x.
Why do you proclaim that the people who would sell me such an adapter are "bad people"?
(Let me guess: You're an engineer. You probably even have the ring to prove it.)
And, but, so? I take steps to avoid pouring hot coffee on myself, just as I take steps to avoid having piping-hot kabobs shoved into my ass.
The liquid is hot: It is coffee.
So don't put it between your legs while driving a car, mmm'kay? Can't figure out some other way to hold the coffee? Then think ahead, and don't order it. (Or just go inside and sit down for a bit to consume the known-hot liquid.)
Also don't drink denatured alcohol, as it has a government mandate to cause permanent organ failure if consumed. And please don't bathe in the Draino -- it burns the flesh something nasty. And don't smoke when filling your lawnmower with gas, and most especially don't light a smoke when filling your lawnmower. Please wear your seatbelt. And make sure you wear an approved, filtered respirator when handling organic solvents. Also: Spay or neuter your animals. And always signal when turning. And please also wear a condom unless you want both children and diseases, either of which can be traumatic, expensive or impossible to treat (or all of the above).
Srsly.
You want hot, fresh food? Try baked spaghetti at any restaurant worth dealing with. Or a cup of hot chocolate at any good coffee shop. Or a pizza from any place that serves pizza.
You want a generic example? Fine. Pick any Subway. Order a 6" chicken breast sub, and have it toasted, and request no toppings. They'll first microwave the chicken, then bake it in their high-speed convection oven, wrap it up, and hand it to you.
Serving temperature? Dunno, but it is going to be damned hot. I don't want it on my genitals so I'm going to avoid putting it there.
Just as Lady McCoffee should have avoided in her coffee incident.
The point, drinkypoo, is that if the correct serving temperature for hot coffee is deemed to be on the same scale as other prepared foods, it will always cause burns from exposure.
Therefore, the impetus is on the vendor to serve only tepid or iced coffee, or on the consumer to make sure that they handle the hot beverage accordingly.
That said: You're wrong. We require that a commercially-sold anything come with appropriate warnings, but we do not require that the commercially-sold anything be safe. I can buy chlorine bleach and Draino at the dollar store. I can buy MEK and live ammunition at the hardware store. I can buy gasoline at the gas station. I can buy hot coffee from the drive-through. (I can also buy a bandsaw, or a chopsaw, or a plasma cutter, or a laser-cutting CNC, or....)
I don't want to douse myself or unduly expose myself with any of these things, but if I do, then I bloody-well reckon that it is my own fault for doing so, and the consequences are mine alone.
And so when I buy propane, I make sure the tank is secured so the valve is protected. And when I buy hot coffee, I do not put it between my legs and hope for the best.
Even my almost-twenty-year-old German car has a cupholder which does a fantastic job of securing a McDonald's coffee cup, but if I didn't have that luxury, then I would still never put the cup of hot coffee (or chocolate or tea or Bovril or whatever) between my legs: I would find another way.
But terrible though they may be, it's really no different than choking on a Big Mac: Should we have McD's cut those into bite-size portions, like I used to do with hot dogs when my daughter was very young?
It is implicit that coffee is hot. Be careful. If you can't be careful, then don't order coffee: You're an adult, and you get to decide what is best for you.
At my local coffee shop, I frequently (as in: more than several times a week) order a pour-over. I "specify" that the hot water come from the boiling espresso machine instead of the hot tap on the Bunn machine, because the hotter water makes my fresh cup of coffee taste markedly better once it is brewed.
But do I drink it at that temperature? No, at least not very quickly. And do I hold it between my legs while driving? Fuck no.
In other news, I also check the lid on my coffee, wherever it comes from, just to make sure I don't pour the hot liquid all over myself when I take a drink.
And when I sit down to dinner, I look at the food on my fork before I cram it into my mouth. If it looks too hot (due to the copious amounts of steam rolling off), I'll take my time with it so I don't burn my mouth.
And when it's raining and I go outside, I expect to get wet.
And if I ignore a traffic signal when driving, I expect to get run into.
So what temperature can a person withstand without injury? According to a graph, 140 degrees F for less than 5 seconds.
140 degrees is very tepid coffee. 140 degrees is less than the required serving temperature for many hot foods. 140 degrees is not hot enough, yet is still dangerous to the skin.
Maybe we should require that all commercially-sold coffee be iced, and that all floors leading to such commercial coffee dispensaries be coated in thick, padded, skid-resistant rubber floors.
We should also take steak knives out of the steak houses: Someone might hurt themselves. Or at least have them sign a waiver before they're allowed to eat their T-bone (OMG! BONES IN MEAT! SOMEONE MIGHT CHOKE!).
Seriously? This functionality has existed as long as tabs have existed.
And even if the magic keystrokes are forgotten, they're just a Google away.
That said: There really should be an easily-identifiable way in Firefox to restore a closed tab without using a keyboard. Perhaps an entry next to "New Tab" under the now-hidden-by-default file menu would suffice.
So your definition of "easily replaced" == Get out plastic prying tools, and a tiny little Torx screwdriver, take apart a bunch of stuff that is glued together, replace battery, and then hope it gets back together properly?
In my book, that level of pain is better described as "not user-serviceable."
The best battery-operated pocket computer in terms of serviceability and durability I've ever had was a Handspring Visor.
To change the batteries, you just opened the door on the back, and replaced the two AA batteries inside. This was only required once a month or so: I was never worried that I'd run out of battery while using it, but if I were, I could get a fresh set of batteries at even the most backwoods gas station/general store in a jiffy. To keep it in a pocket or a bag with lots of stuff, the included cover (which covered the whole front of the device) worked great, and stowed neatly on the back when the device was in use. To open the it up and expose the guts in the event that it needs fixing, you just unscrew the end of the included metal stylus to reveal a Philips screwdriver of just the right size, remove a few screws, and basic disassembly was complete. (Not that mine ever needed fixing, even after years of bouncing around in my cargo pocket with a pocket knife and/or various hand tools. I did note that after a year or two of being abused in ways that would make a modern pocket computer shatter, one of the screws did fall out. It didn't seem to mind.)
Even backups on the Visor were easy: Drop it into the cradle, push sync the button, wait a short time, and done. The entire device could then be lost or destroyed, and total recovery (with a replacement in-hand) was just another sync away. Just try getting this level of functionality from an Android device. Seriously, go ahead and try. (I'll wait.)
The included OS, while not "open" per se, was easily extensible by third-parties but also worked just fine without any extra help.
Now, yes: It wasn't fast. But it handled text, calculations, passwords, and contacts very well. And it was actually useful for a quick sketch, since it was stylus-based. Which is most of what I actually need a pocket computer for, aside from Just Working.
So are we moving backwards? In many ways that I think are important: Yes.
Tip for buying coffee at a grocery store: Always buy whatever everyone else is buying. If you show up at 7PM and the 8 O'Clock Bean is picked thin, you should be buying 8 O'Clock Bean just like everybody else, because it hasn't even had a chance to be rotated before it is sold: It is restocked at least daily.
Whatever the brand is, the one that moves fastest is likely to be the closest thing that you can get to fresh-roasted coffee at your grocery store.
(Forget the "gourmet" bulk stuff in the plastic bins with the chutes to fill up bags. There's got to be 30 pounds of coffee in there, quickly oxidizing and turning to garbage and with low turnover: By the time you get to the bottom of it, it has been ruined for months. Fresh coffee is always better than old coffee.)
(FWIW: My favorite coffee is the organic Fair Trade Ethiopian Yirgacheffe that my local coffee house sells and serves. They order weekly, and buy 5 pounds at a time, and often run out within the week. I buy mine prepared in a pour-over, 1 ounce of beans at a time, but apparently there are others who consume a lot more than I do -- prepared, bulk, or otherwise, since I never see anyone else in there ordering what I'm getting.)
(And if you want to be a real snob, you get green coffee beans and roast them yourself just before grinding and brewing. Forget TFA's Weasel Squeezings: Again, fresh coffee is the best coffee.)
Ok, so data points - at 900k that was a decade ago - say ~'03? (I think @ 300k I joined somewhere in '99?) Maybe we can create a chart, I think it would be interesting... (and I'm sure the/. mods have all that info but am wondering if they would find it as interesting to divulge...)
As a moderator, I'm not sure what you mean by "/. mods have all that info".
Certainly, being #304068, you've been a moderator as well, so you must already realize: Mods aren't all that special here.
But the data is out there, for sure. You can mine historic Slashdot through archive.org's Wayback Machine, or mine/. itself, and glean it all without too much trauma. (Though if you hammer/. too hard, your IP will be banned until you explain yourself. And probably the same with the Wayback Machine, though they'd probably be interested in letting someone actually do it and make exceptions in the interest of science.)
I'd like to point out that the frequencies involved are most certainly RF.
Inductive coupling is a cute efficiency trick, but it's not necessary -- even in existing systems.
(And if inductive coupling were really the primary means of communication, we'd be calling the radiating elements "inductors" instead of "antennas." I mean: It's not as if these two concepts are not well-understood, even if they are often related.)
Meanwhile, I do not understand your millimeter boojigity as it relates to common practice: If it were only useful within a few millimeters, I would be unable to use my access card from a distance of a few inches (as I routinely do). If the signal were to basically disappear after a few centimeters, then using it at a few inches would be impossible.
And at this point, I'd also like to introduce a car anecdote. As an anti-theft function, my 1995 BMW will not start and run without a properly-coded key in close proximity to the ignition switch. And by close proximity, I mean: There is literally a coil of copper wrapped around the lock cylinder, and it can't "see" the key unless it is within a couple of inches.
But one day, I decided I wanted to add a remote start function to my BMW. I dug into it pretty deep and spent two cold nights standing on my head in the driver's side footwell verifying and splicing wires. And since it requires a key to start and run, I made the two trips to the nearest dealer required to secure a new key (two hours drive time, each trip), and spent $30 on a new key.
This new key was then installed inside of an aftermarket box made for the job. It consisted of physical bits to hold the new key, a coil, a relay, some connectors, and a small PCB to tie it together. Nothing else. The box's purpose was to contain a key, and be hidden in the depths of the dashboard, with the coil to be switched into the RF circuit by the relay which was itself activated by the aftermarket remote start system.
I discovered that while the stock coil would only work within very close proximity, the aftermarket coil would work from a few meters away. Intrigued, I tested it: Factory ignition-switch coil was useable for couple of inches, aftermarket relay-switched coil was about 3 meters.
In either case, the same OEM keys were used. Results were similar no matter if the new-and-shiny key, or the old-and-oxidized key were used.
So either your general theory about inductive coupling is hogwash (likely), or the particular antennas (which may resemble and also function as coils) can dramatically influence the range at which such an RF identification system can operate.
Slashdot Mirror
So they paid money for an open-source stack?
A fool and his money are easily parted.
If I get ~9 megabytes per second in the real world from 100Mbps Ethernet on actual file transfers over the on-board Ethernet on my laptop, and ~30 megabytes-per-second on actual file transfers the USB 2.0 Ethernet adapter on that same laptop, then: Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0 should be a boon.
Not because performance is improved by a factor of 10 (as going from 100 to 1000Mbps Ethernet might theoretically be in an ideal situation), but because it's more than three times faster than what I could do before, and I spend 1/3 the time waiting for stuff to move from A to B.
And if I can plug in a cheap widget that gets me 3x the speed, no matter what the platform or the problem: As long as speed is an issue, I'm sold: 3x is always better than 1x, even if 10x is ideal and 3x is less than 10x.
Why do you proclaim that the people who would sell me such an adapter are "bad people"?
(Let me guess: You're an engineer. You probably even have the ring to prove it.)
Bought what from whom?
Hogwash. New Zealanders eat plenty of things that are fowl.
Those damn marketers, always telling people about new stuff before it is released.
If this trend continues, we'll have them actually selling products! And no good could ever come from that.
Sarcasm aside: If there ever was a time when Android project codenames were Top Secret, please tell me when that was.
I mean, FFS: They even make statues of out of these names and plant them in their front lawn.
And, but, so? I take steps to avoid pouring hot coffee on myself, just as I take steps to avoid having piping-hot kabobs shoved into my ass.
The liquid is hot: It is coffee.
So don't put it between your legs while driving a car, mmm'kay? Can't figure out some other way to hold the coffee? Then think ahead, and don't order it. (Or just go inside and sit down for a bit to consume the known-hot liquid.)
Also don't drink denatured alcohol, as it has a government mandate to cause permanent organ failure if consumed. And please don't bathe in the Draino -- it burns the flesh something nasty. And don't smoke when filling your lawnmower with gas, and most especially don't light a smoke when filling your lawnmower. Please wear your seatbelt. And make sure you wear an approved, filtered respirator when handling organic solvents. Also: Spay or neuter your animals. And always signal when turning. And please also wear a condom unless you want both children and diseases, either of which can be traumatic, expensive or impossible to treat (or all of the above).
Srsly.
You want hot, fresh food? Try baked spaghetti at any restaurant worth dealing with. Or a cup of hot chocolate at any good coffee shop. Or a pizza from any place that serves pizza.
You want a generic example? Fine. Pick any Subway. Order a 6" chicken breast sub, and have it toasted, and request no toppings. They'll first microwave the chicken, then bake it in their high-speed convection oven, wrap it up, and hand it to you.
Serving temperature? Dunno, but it is going to be damned hot. I don't want it on my genitals so I'm going to avoid putting it there.
Just as Lady McCoffee should have avoided in her coffee incident.
The point, drinkypoo, is that if the correct serving temperature for hot coffee is deemed to be on the same scale as other prepared foods, it will always cause burns from exposure.
Therefore, the impetus is on the vendor to serve only tepid or iced coffee, or on the consumer to make sure that they handle the hot beverage accordingly.
That said: You're wrong. We require that a commercially-sold anything come with appropriate warnings, but we do not require that the commercially-sold anything be safe. I can buy chlorine bleach and Draino at the dollar store. I can buy MEK and live ammunition at the hardware store. I can buy gasoline at the gas station. I can buy hot coffee from the drive-through. (I can also buy a bandsaw, or a chopsaw, or a plasma cutter, or a laser-cutting CNC, or....)
I don't want to douse myself or unduly expose myself with any of these things, but if I do, then I bloody-well reckon that it is my own fault for doing so, and the consequences are mine alone.
And so when I buy propane, I make sure the tank is secured so the valve is protected. And when I buy hot coffee, I do not put it between my legs and hope for the best.
Even my almost-twenty-year-old German car has a cupholder which does a fantastic job of securing a McDonald's coffee cup, but if I didn't have that luxury, then I would still never put the cup of hot coffee (or chocolate or tea or Bovril or whatever) between my legs: I would find another way.
FFS, srsly.
McDonald's, at the time, was using styrofoam cups for coffee, which tend to be very well-insulated by default.
AC fail.
No.
Food-borne illness is a much bigger and more social problem than food-borne burns.
In what world does the foreseeable uses of brewed coffee include dumping it all over oneself?
Yes, accidents happen. Sometimes, they're terrible accidents.
But terrible though they may be, it's really no different than choking on a Big Mac: Should we have McD's cut those into bite-size portions, like I used to do with hot dogs when my daughter was very young?
It is implicit that coffee is hot. Be careful. If you can't be careful, then don't order coffee: You're an adult, and you get to decide what is best for you.
(html fail: a graph)
At my local coffee shop, I frequently (as in: more than several times a week) order a pour-over. I "specify" that the hot water come from the boiling espresso machine instead of the hot tap on the Bunn machine, because the hotter water makes my fresh cup of coffee taste markedly better once it is brewed.
But do I drink it at that temperature? No, at least not very quickly. And do I hold it between my legs while driving? Fuck no.
In other news, I also check the lid on my coffee, wherever it comes from, just to make sure I don't pour the hot liquid all over myself when I take a drink.
And when I sit down to dinner, I look at the food on my fork before I cram it into my mouth. If it looks too hot (due to the copious amounts of steam rolling off), I'll take my time with it so I don't burn my mouth.
And when it's raining and I go outside, I expect to get wet.
And if I ignore a traffic signal when driving, I expect to get run into.
So what temperature can a person withstand without injury? According to a graph, 140 degrees F for less than 5 seconds.
140 degrees is very tepid coffee. 140 degrees is less than the required serving temperature for many hot foods. 140 degrees is not hot enough, yet is still dangerous to the skin.
Maybe we should require that all commercially-sold coffee be iced, and that all floors leading to such commercial coffee dispensaries be coated in thick, padded, skid-resistant rubber floors.
We should also take steak knives out of the steak houses: Someone might hurt themselves. Or at least have them sign a waiver before they're allowed to eat their T-bone (OMG! BONES IN MEAT! SOMEONE MIGHT CHOKE!).
It is thus proven: GS is both too big to fail, and too big to make mistakes.
Now that is an awesome keyboard shortcut.
Mods, please improve the rating of parent AC's brilliance.
Piss off.
Except for failing on the "Easily identified part," yeah, that's fine.
Poser.
Not people who are surprised that a keyboard combo that restores a closed tab is the Greatest Ever.
Seriously? This functionality has existed as long as tabs have existed.
And even if the magic keystrokes are forgotten, they're just a Google away.
That said: There really should be an easily-identifiable way in Firefox to restore a closed tab without using a keyboard. Perhaps an entry next to "New Tab" under the now-hidden-by-default file menu would suffice.
So your definition of "easily replaced" == Get out plastic prying tools, and a tiny little Torx screwdriver, take apart a bunch of stuff that is glued together, replace battery, and then hope it gets back together properly?
In my book, that level of pain is better described as "not user-serviceable."
The best battery-operated pocket computer in terms of serviceability and durability I've ever had was a Handspring Visor.
To change the batteries, you just opened the door on the back, and replaced the two AA batteries inside. This was only required once a month or so: I was never worried that I'd run out of battery while using it, but if I were, I could get a fresh set of batteries at even the most backwoods gas station/general store in a jiffy. To keep it in a pocket or a bag with lots of stuff, the included cover (which covered the whole front of the device) worked great, and stowed neatly on the back when the device was in use. To open the it up and expose the guts in the event that it needs fixing, you just unscrew the end of the included metal stylus to reveal a Philips screwdriver of just the right size, remove a few screws, and basic disassembly was complete. (Not that mine ever needed fixing, even after years of bouncing around in my cargo pocket with a pocket knife and/or various hand tools. I did note that after a year or two of being abused in ways that would make a modern pocket computer shatter, one of the screws did fall out. It didn't seem to mind.)
Even backups on the Visor were easy: Drop it into the cradle, push sync the button, wait a short time, and done. The entire device could then be lost or destroyed, and total recovery (with a replacement in-hand) was just another sync away. Just try getting this level of functionality from an Android device. Seriously, go ahead and try. (I'll wait.)
The included OS, while not "open" per se, was easily extensible by third-parties but also worked just fine without any extra help.
Now, yes: It wasn't fast. But it handled text, calculations, passwords, and contacts very well. And it was actually useful for a quick sketch, since it was stylus-based. Which is most of what I actually need a pocket computer for, aside from Just Working.
So are we moving backwards? In many ways that I think are important: Yes.
In comparison to all those heavy vehicles driving around, traffic lights aren't even a drop water in the sea in terms of energy use.
Also, pedestrians: They kinda need indicators to show them the status of the intersection.
Visual traffic signals aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
Indeed. I conclude from this that the sun was merely defending itself against an invasion.
Tip for buying coffee at a grocery store: Always buy whatever everyone else is buying. If you show up at 7PM and the 8 O'Clock Bean is picked thin, you should be buying 8 O'Clock Bean just like everybody else, because it hasn't even had a chance to be rotated before it is sold: It is restocked at least daily.
Whatever the brand is, the one that moves fastest is likely to be the closest thing that you can get to fresh-roasted coffee at your grocery store.
(Forget the "gourmet" bulk stuff in the plastic bins with the chutes to fill up bags. There's got to be 30 pounds of coffee in there, quickly oxidizing and turning to garbage and with low turnover: By the time you get to the bottom of it, it has been ruined for months. Fresh coffee is always better than old coffee.)
(FWIW: My favorite coffee is the organic Fair Trade Ethiopian Yirgacheffe that my local coffee house sells and serves. They order weekly, and buy 5 pounds at a time, and often run out within the week. I buy mine prepared in a pour-over, 1 ounce of beans at a time, but apparently there are others who consume a lot more than I do -- prepared, bulk, or otherwise, since I never see anyone else in there ordering what I'm getting.)
(And if you want to be a real snob, you get green coffee beans and roast them yourself just before grinding and brewing. Forget TFA's Weasel Squeezings: Again, fresh coffee is the best coffee.)
As a moderator, I'm not sure what you mean by "/. mods have all that info".
Certainly, being #304068, you've been a moderator as well, so you must already realize: Mods aren't all that special here.
But the data is out there, for sure. You can mine historic Slashdot through archive.org's Wayback Machine, or mine /. itself, and glean it all without too much trauma. (Though if you hammer /. too hard, your IP will be banned until you explain yourself. And probably the same with the Wayback Machine, though they'd probably be interested in letting someone actually do it and make exceptions in the interest of science.)
I'd like to point out that the frequencies involved are most certainly RF.
Inductive coupling is a cute efficiency trick, but it's not necessary -- even in existing systems.
(And if inductive coupling were really the primary means of communication, we'd be calling the radiating elements "inductors" instead of "antennas." I mean: It's not as if these two concepts are not well-understood, even if they are often related.)
Meanwhile, I do not understand your millimeter boojigity as it relates to common practice: If it were only useful within a few millimeters, I would be unable to use my access card from a distance of a few inches (as I routinely do). If the signal were to basically disappear after a few centimeters, then using it at a few inches would be impossible.
And at this point, I'd also like to introduce a car anecdote. As an anti-theft function, my 1995 BMW will not start and run without a properly-coded key in close proximity to the ignition switch. And by close proximity, I mean: There is literally a coil of copper wrapped around the lock cylinder, and it can't "see" the key unless it is within a couple of inches.
But one day, I decided I wanted to add a remote start function to my BMW. I dug into it pretty deep and spent two cold nights standing on my head in the driver's side footwell verifying and splicing wires. And since it requires a key to start and run, I made the two trips to the nearest dealer required to secure a new key (two hours drive time, each trip), and spent $30 on a new key.
This new key was then installed inside of an aftermarket box made for the job. It consisted of physical bits to hold the new key, a coil, a relay, some connectors, and a small PCB to tie it together. Nothing else. The box's purpose was to contain a key, and be hidden in the depths of the dashboard, with the coil to be switched into the RF circuit by the relay which was itself activated by the aftermarket remote start system.
I discovered that while the stock coil would only work within very close proximity, the aftermarket coil would work from a few meters away. Intrigued, I tested it: Factory ignition-switch coil was useable for couple of inches, aftermarket relay-switched coil was about 3 meters.
In either case, the same OEM keys were used. Results were similar no matter if the new-and-shiny key, or the old-and-oxidized key were used.
So either your general theory about inductive coupling is hogwash (likely), or the particular antennas (which may resemble and also function as coils) can dramatically influence the range at which such an RF identification system can operate.