Here we are arguing about new standards supplanting old ones. We've already got esperanto, and - being technical people here on slashdot - we already understand it. Let's just make it the standard.
Oh, it didn't catch on? Damn, I thought I had this one licked.
Anyway, if the characters wont render on every machine properly, then it'll be a great day for the crooks out there who already do a pretty good job of fooling the masses (can you say paypa1.com? I know you could.)
FWIW, when talking about languages, especially the rise of English, I view most of the comments from the French as sour grapes. I mean, how insulting is it to have to admit that the Lingua Franca of the world is now American (which is somewhat distict from, but clearly similar to "English," which is spoken by very few - mostly in primary education classes devoted to that topic).
I suppose that depends on how much you value a recommendation from these folks, or whether you can just walk away knowing you'll never need them again. Burning bridges can be dangerous.
How good an actor are you? If it were me, I would lie - lie like a rug. Tell them that you had been offered another position recently, but had turned them down because you valued your current job. After hearing of your pending termination, you called the headhunter back to find out if the position was still available, and it was, but they would like you to start as soon as possible. Apoligize for the short notice, but gently point out that you needed to take care of your family first.
When I left my last job, I was careful not to tell anyone where I was going. I just didn't really trust my management, so I kept it uder wraps that I was starting my own firm. I also lied about why I left and as a result they're only frustrated with me. If I'd told my former VP that I was leaving because I had no respect for him professionally, that his managerial skills were poor, and that I felt my compensation was not in line with the (verbal) promises made to me during my interview I think their attitiude would be openly hostile.
Of course, if you were a real b@stard and knew that you were the only one who could do the training, I would resign and then offer your services as an independent contractor in the same meeting. Try about 4x to 5x your current pay rate (no need to gouge them - that _is_ a reasonable rate) plus 1.15xexpenses, with a guaranteed minimum number of hours, and minimum number of hours per week while under contract. Then add a completion bonus of about 20-25% of the total contract value. See also the above comment, re: burning bridges.
Actually, since I work in a "production" environment (strucutral engineering firm), I make copies for legal purposes. I need to have a record for liability reasons, and I doubt the court would frown on keeping records of (potentially) transient works if the need to discover them for a court trial arose.
This is why every time I use a web reference I make a hardcopy of it and include it in my research folder. It did not take long for me to figure out that web pages are no more useful than manufacturer catalogs - once the year is up, you might never get that tidbit of information back. If it's too large to want to print, I'll hardcopy the couple of pages I need, and PDF the whole thing for digital storage.
Having a hardcopy (1) documents the information and it's (purported) source, and (2) allows offline access for comparison and validation.
And don't forget the pentatonic scale. It sounds foreign to westerners when played straight (it sounds "eastern"), but many - if not most - popular stringed instrument riffs are based on it.
It's a good thing the RIAA hasn't figured out how to copyright the I IV V progression, or everybody would be paying royalties;-)
How can you say Clay didn't have the look? My wife was sucked in by AI last year, and despite my loathing of Karaoke (that's all is was) I ended up listening to two or three songs from the season as I walked through the living room on my way to do _anything_ else. The first time I saw and heard Clay Aiken, I knew he was the pre-death reincarnation of Barry Manilow. The hair was the dead giveaway.
IMHO, his voice was the best, by a wide margin. Not perfect, but very good. The voting process by the end was essentially random. Those who stayed on the line longer to hear whatever comfirmation/advertising message prevented other callers from "votong" (getting through). Yes, my wife voted. The line was busy most of the night. QED: the voting was limited by the number of incoming lines, not by the number of phone calls placed. The "closeness" of the contest was preordained by the sampling method.
BTW - I fully forgive my wife's guilty pleasure here, as I do with her need to watch "Charmed" and "Seventh Heaven." With the Tivo, she carefully watches them when I'm not around. She doesn't watch Survivor (or any of the "hook up for money" shows), and agrees the the addition of celebrity teams in the eco-challenge has made it almost unwatchable. Heck, I'm probably one of the few football fans with a wife who knows more about most NFL players than I do, and can sucessfully argue the merits of differences between NFL and College rules. That alone more than makes up for the AI weakness.
Which is why building codes require special jacketed cables for use un plenum spaces (ie: plenum rated). If you install non-rated cables in the plenum space you are breaking the law, and could be liable to future tenants for remove of the non-complying cabling. Yes, that fact is usually ignored since nobody pulls a building permit when retrofitting low-voltage cabling and therfor there's no inspector to make sure it is done correctly (or, at least, to code).
As a structural engineer, I deal with folks every day who do things "wrong" but they've never had a building fall down. I call it Luck, as defined by the myriad little things which don't have any reproducable/quantifiable strucutral value which - in the real world - tend to help out a bit (friction, drywall screws, adhesive on gun-nails, etc.). Combine that with safety factors approaching 3 and the rarity for a building to see a code-required load (usu. less than 2% chance per year) and builders and owners get away with a lot of $#!+.
The fact is that the actual danger is fairly low, but when it's your family member that get's turned into medium steak - crispy on the outside with a warm red center - suddenly the $50,000 to remove the cabling seems like a small price to pay (and would have been a small price compared to the settlement or jury award).
Well, I didn't mean for this to sound so gloom-and-doom. Remember that crispy human with gypsum and ash crust requires multiple failures - bad/blocked exits, non- or sub-functioning alarm and fire supression, ignition source, flammables. Keep your buildings well maintained and you can handle a bit of non-compliance.
My reaction to Little Bird was "wow...almost". The real lead - fake backups has some real potential, and probably a couple of studio cats a bit nervous. Of course those who play instruments are probably laughing at the vocalists who thought it could never happen to them.
The lead-background is an intresting study, and plays into all of the research done for audio compression algorithms. The ability for foreground sounds to dominate the listeners perception make the background more forgivable. I really don't know where I was going with this...
So, what is the expected data speed limit?
on
DVD-Rs go 8x
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I bought a 4X when they dropped to $125, and am pretty happy with it. I won't spring for a faster drive until I can get a DVD-9.
But to my real question: How fast will they go? Most seem to be married to the 33MHz IDE spec on which all removable media are based. IIRC that's one byte (8bit parallel) at 33MHz...or about 25X (118GB/hr) with the bus completely saturated. So, without moving to IDE100 or IDE133, 20-22X seems to be a limiting factor.
Someone above mentioned that 16X DVD speed has the same rotational velocity as a CD at 48X. Now, since 52X seems to be the CD-R limit based on the likelyhood of media disintegration that would seem to limit the DVDs to about 17X.
I suppose there is the proposition that a two laser DVD-9 could overcome the rotational velocity bottleneck by writing to both layers at once, given that the file layout cooperates. And if writing a DVD-18 becomes a possibility (unlikely), then a four laser system could write all four layers at once. But this requires moving the CD/DVD devices beyond the UltraDMA mode 4 they seem limited to.
http://www.corporatemechanics.com/pagesa/ourexp. ht ml
Looks like they (DM Contact Management, aka the spammer) took CM's advice and liked it:
"Corporate Mechanics has been a key member of the set up team for our business. Corporate Mechanics and the guerilla management methods they have developed have streamlined our operation, technology, staff training, and development. Their assistance has cut our growth curve by a large margin and provided us a strong management and business platform to both operate and grow our firm effectively. The savings of effort and resources has been instrumental in our growth and profitability. The level of diverse experience coupled with the cutting edge solutions have served our company extremely well as they would any business. They get the job done period!
If you are looking for business effectiveness specialists Corporate Mechanics is the real article without question!"
Andrew MacKay, General Manager, DM Contact Management Customer and Support Services Provider to Internet Marketers Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
So I suppose we should add Brian R Bowman (CEO of Corporate Mechanics) to the s#!t list of bad people who support such badgering of "clients". Maybe even drop him an email at group3@intergate.ca or give him a call (1-888-980-7520) to let him know what you think of the tactics which make otherwise sane people become email murderers.
Yeah, it's illegal to send threats, but I think this guy should get off just on the principal of it. Kind of like sending email threats fo Osama bin Laden or Saddam - kind of chicken soup for the soul.
Of course, being CA, maybe this will spark a 3 day waiting period on ice picks and power tools.
I'd always heard it dort of backwards: that MPEG-4 quality didn't scale to higher bitrates. That is, apparently, only marginally true however.
I would expect that, for a proportional bitrate, any good codec at low resolution would scale to higher resolution. As examples, GIF or JPG both scale easily, as does all uncompressed or losslessly compressed still and motion video. Of course, for double the pixels you need double the bitrate.
Everyone else is trying to figure out how to sell their product to China and India. Do that and you have a 40% market share of the earthlings. Making $100,000 profit on an automobile sold to Mr Gates and a hundred of his friends seems like a good idea, until your competitor figures out how to make a dollar a pop on a bicycle sold to every man, woman, and child in the two above mentioned countries.
I agree that $9 sounds a bit on the high side, though I have no basis for that. A computer DVD drive doesn't have to fool with the decoding licences, so there's a bit that can be stripped. Of course, you might ask why a DVD drive is $30, when a box with a motherboard, microprocessor, video interface, powersupply, and IR remote control and interface software, plus decoding software and operating system, plus your computer DVD drive (which is what they use) is only $10 more.
Here's a reality check, though. If the average chinese household buys a disposable DVD player every three to four years, and we assume 2.4 residents per household, that comes to 112.5 Billion Yen ($13.5B) in royalties over the next ten years at $9 a piece. Of course, the logic is flawed, as not every household will have one, but that kind of number could easily be used to sway a government to develop their own standard and keep those yen in the country.
I'll tell you what, you guys (the Chinese) make a $200 player that'll accept component, DVI-D and firewire and burn it at 720p or better to a DVD-9 and I'll buy one. In fact, you can even do a roll out with DVD-D and FW to follow a couple of years apart and I'll buy each one as it comes out. DMCA? Screw that - come get me if you think you can prove I'm not using it for fair use purposes.
860 mA at 3.5V isn't exactly trivial, especially if flight times are to be more than a few seconds.
Yes, yes, your joking (just what I need, electronic moths in my house), but the reality is dissappointing:
For those thinking solar/ambient light would be great, I'll spot you you 15% efficiency and 1200W/m^^2 full sunlight. You'll need 3W of continuous power. So as long as you can get a non-obscured, perpendicular line of site to the sun, you'll need about 1/1200/0.15*3=167sq cm or a 16.5cm diameter round solar panel which can track the sun. I mention a round panel, because the current footprint is only 13cm.
A goo dway to think of it is using the most prolific solar powered objects on the earth with billions of year of development: plants. They run wonderfully on solar power, but they don't move so fast.;-)
As long as you agree to waive all legal liability to any injury sustained - whether someone else's fault or not - while riding without one.
I don't want to be responsible for your serious injury or death when - if you were wearing a helmet - you'd have walked away with a minor case of road rash.
I guess you got the +4 for the Cat's Cradle reference. Nice, but you failed to tell me what Howard Dean has offered as his policy on IP, and how he will rectify the corporate stranglehold on the legislature as a whole.
I'm actually curious what his stance is. If he wins the nomination (and it looks lke he will), he's likely to get my vote anyway. Dubya has proven that his eyes are bigger than his stomach, and his mouth is faster than his brain. That's not a combination I really want in the White House for four more years. Nonetheless, I'd like to be able to tell folks that Howard Dean "get's it" and that;s why they should vote for him, rather than "he's not a moron with a rich dad and good political connections" - that, for some reason, doesn't register as "insightful, +5" with the in-laws.
They already have this...it's the smart card and it comes with every DirecTV receiver. It has all your subscription information on it, so you can just get a bunch of receivers and have your personal card. Just take your card with you when you go on vacation, travel, whatever and plug into the local machine to get all your programming just like at home.
What, it doens't work that way? But I paid for the subscription! Never take the card out? It can't be transferred at all? Then why bother making it removable? Why not just a SN in the box itself? Oh, you got sold on useless technology, sorry.
(you can just mod this as offtopic, but I've always wanted to complain about smartcards, and this seemed at least tangetially related)
Alton says to put them in the fridge for a while first, then when you drop 'em in the boiling water they won't wake up 'til they're dead (when, of course, they won't wake up at all).
Of course, being so close to cockroaches I don't find them even slightly desirable as food.
Not for tracking, but for authentication? I'm getting a bit tired of my $20's changing every few years, with newer and better printing processes. Heck, if you showed me five "new" twenty dollar bills and asked me to find one or more counterfits I wouldn't have a chance.
Give me a handy-dandy rf interrogator which checks the validity of the internal key with a one-way hash and gives me a true or false. Sure, you could still just copy a number, but then they'd all be the same, and a smart reader would flag any repeats in a checked set. The keygens for WinXP I've seen take several seconds per attempt, and minutes to generate a valid key on a fast desktop machine...and it's only a 140 bit key (or thereabouts).
1. It's a "cool" gadget, based on size and apperance. That's almost enough to make it a hit.
2. It's UI is (supposedly) the best, hands down.
That's it. Unless you have very special needs (features, not short-bus) it's all you need to know. Performance specs aren't for consumer driven products. They're for geeks (like us).
Sure there are areas in which it's not the best, but it rules in the two that matter the most. I have a panny CD-MP3 which I never use due to UI issues (no ff/rw & low volume). Otherwise it's a nice product...even gets 40 hours on a pair of AA batterie...but it doesn't work for me.
The iPod is consummate Apple: cool looking and easy to use. It's more numerous now because it's an early market product and everyone else hasn't figured out how to make a UI which isn't a)buggy or b)difficult to navigate or both. 80% (paid)downloadable marketshare? Sure, but it's a mighty small market...call me back in a couple of years.
Hey, if I didn't tape the Post-It(tm) with my password to my monitor, then it might fall off after a year or so, and then how would I log in? Answer me _that_ mr. smartypants!
Okay, I don't really have it taped to my monitor. I have a card in my pocket with 200 random characters in a single string (numeric+mixed case). From that I chose an 8 character passwod every so often, sometime forwards, sometimes backwards. I refer to it for the first couple of days until the password is learned by rote. If I need an old password, i only have to remeber a couple of characters to be able to find it in the pattern. And no one is going to guess that my password is P5huIy68, or whatever. It also covers almost all of the rules of most systems (except my bank, which has to have a symbol, so I append one). And yes, that's an old one I typed in. In the worst possible case, I'm no more than 400 tries (including wrapping) from the correct password.
You're right of course, users are most of the problem. But the untrustworthiness of systems is the other. Do you trust Microsoft Passport? I know I don't. I'd rather send my cc# plaintext and review my statement carefully every month rather than store my data on M$ servers. (I only use 1 time CC#s on the'net now, FWIW).
Slashdot Mirror
Here we are arguing about new standards supplanting old ones. We've already got esperanto, and - being technical people here on slashdot - we already understand it. Let's just make it the standard.
Oh, it didn't catch on? Damn, I thought I had this one licked.
Anyway, if the characters wont render on every machine properly, then it'll be a great day for the crooks out there who already do a pretty good job of fooling the masses (can you say paypa1.com? I know you could.)
FWIW, when talking about languages, especially the rise of English, I view most of the comments from the French as sour grapes. I mean, how insulting is it to have to admit that the Lingua Franca of the world is now American (which is somewhat distict from, but clearly similar to "English," which is spoken by very few - mostly in primary education classes devoted to that topic).
Clearly a conspiracy against an honest, upstanding American corporate icon. It's just sad how you folks will twist the facts.
I suppose that depends on how much you value a recommendation from these folks, or whether you can just walk away knowing you'll never need them again. Burning bridges can be dangerous.
How good an actor are you? If it were me, I would lie - lie like a rug. Tell them that you had been offered another position recently, but had turned them down because you valued your current job. After hearing of your pending termination, you called the headhunter back to find out if the position was still available, and it was, but they would like you to start as soon as possible. Apoligize for the short notice, but gently point out that you needed to take care of your family first.
When I left my last job, I was careful not to tell anyone where I was going. I just didn't really trust my management, so I kept it uder wraps that I was starting my own firm. I also lied about why I left and as a result they're only frustrated with me. If I'd told my former VP that I was leaving because I had no respect for him professionally, that his managerial skills were poor, and that I felt my compensation was not in line with the (verbal) promises made to me during my interview I think their attitiude would be openly hostile.
Of course, if you were a real b@stard and knew that you were the only one who could do the training, I would resign and then offer your services as an independent contractor in the same meeting. Try about 4x to 5x your current pay rate (no need to gouge them - that _is_ a reasonable rate) plus 1.15xexpenses, with a guaranteed minimum number of hours, and minimum number of hours per week while under contract. Then add a completion bonus of about 20-25% of the total contract value. See also the above comment, re: burning bridges.
(if this is a double post it's because of the "Slow Down, Cowboy" rule requiring a 20 second reply timeout)
Actually, since I work in a "production" environment (strucutral engineering firm), I make copies for legal purposes. I need to have a record for liability reasons, and I doubt the court would frown on keeping records of (potentially) transient works if the need to discover them for a court trial arose.
This is why every time I use a web reference I make a hardcopy of it and include it in my research folder. It did not take long for me to figure out that web pages are no more useful than manufacturer catalogs - once the year is up, you might never get that tidbit of information back. If it's too large to want to print, I'll hardcopy the couple of pages I need, and PDF the whole thing for digital storage.
Having a hardcopy (1) documents the information and it's (purported) source, and (2) allows offline access for comparison and validation.
And don't forget the pentatonic scale. It sounds foreign to westerners when played straight (it sounds "eastern"), but many - if not most - popular stringed instrument riffs are based on it.
;-)
It's a good thing the RIAA hasn't figured out how to copyright the I IV V progression, or everybody would be paying royalties
How can you say Clay didn't have the look? My wife was sucked in by AI last year, and despite my loathing of Karaoke (that's all is was) I ended up listening to two or three songs from the season as I walked through the living room on my way to do _anything_ else. The first time I saw and heard Clay Aiken, I knew he was the pre-death reincarnation of Barry Manilow. The hair was the dead giveaway.
IMHO, his voice was the best, by a wide margin. Not perfect, but very good. The voting process by the end was essentially random. Those who stayed on the line longer to hear whatever comfirmation/advertising message prevented other callers from "votong" (getting through). Yes, my wife voted. The line was busy most of the night. QED: the voting was limited by the number of incoming lines, not by the number of phone calls placed. The "closeness" of the contest was preordained by the sampling method.
BTW - I fully forgive my wife's guilty pleasure here, as I do with her need to watch "Charmed" and "Seventh Heaven." With the Tivo, she carefully watches them when I'm not around. She doesn't watch Survivor (or any of the "hook up for money" shows), and agrees the the addition of celebrity teams in the eco-challenge has made it almost unwatchable. Heck, I'm probably one of the few football fans with a wife who knows more about most NFL players than I do, and can sucessfully argue the merits of differences between NFL and College rules. That alone more than makes up for the AI weakness.
Which is why building codes require special jacketed cables for use un plenum spaces (ie: plenum rated). If you install non-rated cables in the plenum space you are breaking the law, and could be liable to future tenants for remove of the non-complying cabling. Yes, that fact is usually ignored since nobody pulls a building permit when retrofitting low-voltage cabling and therfor there's no inspector to make sure it is done correctly (or, at least, to code).
As a structural engineer, I deal with folks every day who do things "wrong" but they've never had a building fall down. I call it Luck, as defined by the myriad little things which don't have any reproducable/quantifiable strucutral value which - in the real world - tend to help out a bit (friction, drywall screws, adhesive on gun-nails, etc.). Combine that with safety factors approaching 3 and the rarity for a building to see a code-required load (usu. less than 2% chance per year) and builders and owners get away with a lot of $#!+.
The fact is that the actual danger is fairly low, but when it's your family member that get's turned into medium steak - crispy on the outside with a warm red center - suddenly the $50,000 to remove the cabling seems like a small price to pay (and would have been a small price compared to the settlement or jury award).
Well, I didn't mean for this to sound so gloom-and-doom. Remember that crispy human with gypsum and ash crust requires multiple failures - bad/blocked exits, non- or sub-functioning alarm and fire supression, ignition source, flammables. Keep your buildings well maintained and you can handle a bit of non-compliance.
My reaction to Little Bird was "wow...almost". The real lead - fake backups has some real potential, and probably a couple of studio cats a bit nervous. Of course those who play instruments are probably laughing at the vocalists who thought it could never happen to them.
The lead-background is an intresting study, and plays into all of the research done for audio compression algorithms. The ability for foreground sounds to dominate the listeners perception make the background more forgivable. I really don't know where I was going with this...
I bought a 4X when they dropped to $125, and am pretty happy with it. I won't spring for a faster drive until I can get a DVD-9.
But to my real question: How fast will they go? Most seem to be married to the 33MHz IDE spec on which all removable media are based. IIRC that's one byte (8bit parallel) at 33MHz...or about 25X (118GB/hr) with the bus completely saturated. So, without moving to IDE100 or IDE133, 20-22X seems to be a limiting factor.
Someone above mentioned that 16X DVD speed has the same rotational velocity as a CD at 48X. Now, since 52X seems to be the CD-R limit based on the likelyhood of media disintegration that would seem to limit the DVDs to about 17X.
I suppose there is the proposition that a two laser DVD-9 could overcome the rotational velocity bottleneck by writing to both layers at once, given that the file layout cooperates. And if writing a DVD-18 becomes a possibility (unlikely), then a four laser system could write all four layers at once. But this requires moving the CD/DVD devices beyond the UltraDMA mode 4 they seem limited to.
So...where will the DVD speed end?
...as learned from Corporate Mechanics:
. ht ml
http://www.corporatemechanics.com/pagesa/ourexp
Looks like they (DM Contact Management, aka the spammer) took CM's advice and liked it:
"Corporate Mechanics has been a key member of the set up team for our business. Corporate Mechanics and the guerilla management methods they have developed have streamlined our operation, technology, staff training, and development. Their assistance has cut our growth curve by a large margin and provided us a strong management and business platform to both operate and grow our firm effectively. The savings of effort and resources has been instrumental in our growth and profitability. The level of diverse experience coupled with the cutting edge solutions have served our company extremely well as they would any business. They get the job done period!
If you are looking for business effectiveness specialists Corporate Mechanics is the real article without question!"
Andrew MacKay, General Manager, DM Contact Management
Customer and Support Services Provider to Internet Marketers
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
So I suppose we should add Brian R Bowman (CEO of Corporate Mechanics) to the s#!t list of bad people who support such badgering of "clients". Maybe even drop him an email at group3@intergate.ca or give him a call (1-888-980-7520) to let him know what you think of the tactics which make otherwise sane people become email murderers.
Yeah, it's illegal to send threats, but I think this guy should get off just on the principal of it. Kind of like sending email threats fo Osama bin Laden or Saddam - kind of chicken soup for the soul.
Of course, being CA, maybe this will spark a 3 day waiting period on ice picks and power tools.
My favorite line:
"Mackay said such firms gave a bad name to the penis enhancement business."
Gosh, I can't belive I've been mislead to think the whole industry was a farce by "such firms".
I'd always heard it dort of backwards: that MPEG-4 quality didn't scale to higher bitrates. That is, apparently, only marginally true however.
I would expect that, for a proportional bitrate, any good codec at low resolution would scale to higher resolution. As examples, GIF or JPG both scale easily, as does all uncompressed or losslessly compressed still and motion video. Of course, for double the pixels you need double the bitrate.
For a while there, the Optorite 4x DVD+/- recorders were DVD-W machines. You could write to -R discs, but the discs were essentially unreadable!
Word! (or whatever you kids say these days ;-)
Everyone else is trying to figure out how to sell their product to China and India. Do that and you have a 40% market share of the earthlings. Making $100,000 profit on an automobile sold to Mr Gates and a hundred of his friends seems like a good idea, until your competitor figures out how to make a dollar a pop on a bicycle sold to every man, woman, and child in the two above mentioned countries.
I agree that $9 sounds a bit on the high side, though I have no basis for that. A computer DVD drive doesn't have to fool with the decoding licences, so there's a bit that can be stripped. Of course, you might ask why a DVD drive is $30, when a box with a motherboard, microprocessor, video interface, powersupply, and IR remote control and interface software, plus decoding software and operating system, plus your computer DVD drive (which is what they use) is only $10 more.
Here's a reality check, though. If the average chinese household buys a disposable DVD player every three to four years, and we assume 2.4 residents per household, that comes to 112.5 Billion Yen ($13.5B) in royalties over the next ten years at $9 a piece. Of course, the logic is flawed, as not every household will have one, but that kind of number could easily be used to sway a government to develop their own standard and keep those yen in the country.
I'll tell you what, you guys (the Chinese) make a $200 player that'll accept component, DVI-D and firewire and burn it at 720p or better to a DVD-9 and I'll buy one. In fact, you can even do a roll out with DVD-D and FW to follow a couple of years apart and I'll buy each one as it comes out. DMCA? Screw that - come get me if you think you can prove I'm not using it for fair use purposes.
860 mA at 3.5V isn't exactly trivial, especially if flight times are to be more than a few seconds.
;-)
Yes, yes, your joking (just what I need, electronic moths in my house), but the reality is dissappointing:
For those thinking solar/ambient light would be great, I'll spot you you 15% efficiency and 1200W/m^^2 full sunlight. You'll need 3W of continuous power. So as long as you can get a non-obscured, perpendicular line of site to the sun, you'll need about 1/1200/0.15*3=167sq cm or a 16.5cm diameter round solar panel which can track the sun. I mention a round panel, because the current footprint is only 13cm.
A goo dway to think of it is using the most prolific solar powered objects on the earth with billions of year of development: plants. They run wonderfully on solar power, but they don't move so fast.
As long as you agree to waive all legal liability to any injury sustained - whether someone else's fault or not - while riding without one.
I don't want to be responsible for your serious injury or death when - if you were wearing a helmet - you'd have walked away with a minor case of road rash.
I guess you got the +4 for the Cat's Cradle reference. Nice, but you failed to tell me what Howard Dean has offered as his policy on IP, and how he will rectify the corporate stranglehold on the legislature as a whole.
I'm actually curious what his stance is. If he wins the nomination (and it looks lke he will), he's likely to get my vote anyway. Dubya has proven that his eyes are bigger than his stomach, and his mouth is faster than his brain. That's not a combination I really want in the White House for four more years. Nonetheless, I'd like to be able to tell folks that Howard Dean "get's it" and that;s why they should vote for him, rather than "he's not a moron with a rich dad and good political connections" - that, for some reason, doesn't register as "insightful, +5" with the in-laws.
They already have this...it's the smart card and it comes with every DirecTV receiver. It has all your subscription information on it, so you can just get a bunch of receivers and have your personal card. Just take your card with you when you go on vacation, travel, whatever and plug into the local machine to get all your programming just like at home.
What, it doens't work that way? But I paid for the subscription! Never take the card out? It can't be transferred at all? Then why bother making it removable? Why not just a SN in the box itself? Oh, you got sold on useless technology, sorry.
(you can just mod this as offtopic, but I've always wanted to complain about smartcards, and this seemed at least tangetially related)
Alton says to put them in the fridge for a while first, then when you drop 'em in the boiling water they won't wake up 'til they're dead (when, of course, they won't wake up at all).
Of course, being so close to cockroaches I don't find them even slightly desirable as food.
Not for tracking, but for authentication? I'm getting a bit tired of my $20's changing every few years, with newer and better printing processes. Heck, if you showed me five "new" twenty dollar bills and asked me to find one or more counterfits I wouldn't have a chance.
Give me a handy-dandy rf interrogator which checks the validity of the internal key with a one-way hash and gives me a true or false. Sure, you could still just copy a number, but then they'd all be the same, and a smart reader would flag any repeats in a checked set. The keygens for WinXP I've seen take several seconds per attempt, and minutes to generate a valid key on a fast desktop machine...and it's only a 140 bit key (or thereabouts).
Any possibility of this?
Oh, come on. Ipod is popular because
1. It's a "cool" gadget, based on size and apperance. That's almost enough to make it a hit.
2. It's UI is (supposedly) the best, hands down.
That's it. Unless you have very special needs (features, not short-bus) it's all you need to know. Performance specs aren't for consumer driven products. They're for geeks (like us).
Sure there are areas in which it's not the best, but it rules in the two that matter the most. I have a panny CD-MP3 which I never use due to UI issues (no ff/rw & low volume). Otherwise it's a nice product...even gets 40 hours on a pair of AA batterie...but it doesn't work for me.
The iPod is consummate Apple: cool looking and easy to use. It's more numerous now because it's an early market product and everyone else hasn't figured out how to make a UI which isn't a)buggy or b)difficult to navigate or both. 80% (paid)downloadable marketshare? Sure, but it's a mighty small market...call me back in a couple of years.
Hey, if I didn't tape the Post-It(tm) with my password to my monitor, then it might fall off after a year or so, and then how would I log in? Answer me _that_ mr. smartypants!
Okay, I don't really have it taped to my monitor. I have a card in my pocket with 200 random characters in a single string (numeric+mixed case). From that I chose an 8 character passwod every so often, sometime forwards, sometimes backwards. I refer to it for the first couple of days until the password is learned by rote. If I need an old password, i only have to remeber a couple of characters to be able to find it in the pattern. And no one is going to guess that my password is P5huIy68, or whatever. It also covers almost all of the rules of most systems (except my bank, which has to have a symbol, so I append one). And yes, that's an old one I typed in. In the worst possible case, I'm no more than 400 tries (including wrapping) from the correct password.
You're right of course, users are most of the problem. But the untrustworthiness of systems is the other. Do you trust Microsoft Passport? I know I don't. I'd rather send my cc# plaintext and review my statement carefully every month rather than store my data on M$ servers. (I only use 1 time CC#s on the'net now, FWIW).