I got a 2000-model Spire for a PowerBook G3, and it has been absolutely perfect. Good materials and construction, lots of pockets, comfortable to carry. When I switched to a PowerBook G4 17-inch this year, I couldn't bring myself to retire the bag. The aluminum monster fits with the padded sleeve removed. I was initially concerned about possible damage to the laptop, but after more than half a year of daily bus rides, the machine is in perfect condition. It's really a fantastic bag.
In the Conference Report, the change to the definition of financial institution is in Title III, Subtitle E (Sec. 374), which begins on page 76 of the PDF. The explanatory statement for that Section begins on page 112 of the PDF.
The Section in question is really just a reference to another Section of United States Code. On top of that, the PDF of this report is not searchable (it's a scanned image). Do we have an award for Information Obfuscation in Government? Why can't we at least have these reports in hypertext, with live links to the referenced laws?
Yeah but that's 11 MB/S per connection not total bandwidth. 256 users can be connected, each consuming up to the 11 MB/S bandwidth. Herein lies the difference between wired and wireless. Of course these 256 users may be saturating the 100 base-t connected to the access point.:)
That's incorrect. In 802.11, assuming all stations are on the same channel, everyone within range of an access point is in the same collision domain at that access point. (They might not be within range of one another, however.) So, for communications involving the access point, the "11Mbps" (user data rate is less than half that in practice, accounting for control frames, deferrals, randomized backoffs,...) is shared between the stations in the Basic Service Set.
Just to clarify, I called a local Ford dealer, who explained the page contents. The GCRW (Gross Combined Weight Rating -- GCWR?) value listed is the maximum weight rating for the vehicle, passengers, towing load, and everything else. The "weight" value is indeed the maximum towing capacity. He was unable to find a standalone vehicle weight figure.
I suppose one could conjecture about the weight of some gasoline, various fluids, and a handful of humans, then do some arithmetic on the given values to guess at a vehicle weight. In any case, I stand corrected. =)
And finally, your "BIG BAD EVIL SUV", the mother of 'em all, the Ford Excursion, weighs 3575 pounds. ~1.78 tons. Not even 2 tons, and nowhere close to your "3 tons of death" you're trying to imply.
Christ. Yeah, the SSSCA sucks, but you're way off the mark with your comments. Do your homework first.
(Emphasis added.)
Not to doubt your sincerity, but my Ranger weighs more than 2 tons. I think this is the homework you meant, where it appears that the curb weights go up to 11,000lbs., with the likely peak of the soccer mom distribution falling somewhere around 6-8,000lbs.
802.11 uses the "carrier sense multiple access protocol with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) medium sharing mechanism." [1] The issue in contention-based wireless MACs is that collisions may not be detectable by transmitting nodes, so both Tx and Rx nodes participate in an RTS/CTS exchange prior to data transmission. This allows nearby nodes to reschedule their own communication so as to reduce the probability of collision. The side effect, as you point out, is increased latency in the actual data transmission; CSMA/CA is necessarily worse in this regard than CSMA/CD.
Of course, in 802.11b, once a node has secured the channel, it has (up to) 11Mbps to play with. I don't know how Proxim's scheme works, but presumably it trades off effective station bandwidth (each node getting 1/n or somesuch) for predictable access. For various reasons, this kind of design never took off in the wired LAN world.
-jd
[1] IEEE Std 802.11-1997 Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) specifications
The big problem I see is battery life. The original Itsy dealt with this by having a cholesteric display, I think, so that it could be powered off but still display data.
In all likelihood, "GDS1110BC," meaning "SA-1110 stepping B4." I guess it could also be a "BB" part, but somehow I doubt that Compaq are sitting on a big pile of old inventory.
The audio is a little more limited than it has to be. They chose to use the built-in audio capability you have when you combine an SA1110 and an SA1111 -- this is 16 bit 11khz. So, although it has all the processor oomph you need, it won't make much of an mp3 player.
A few corrections here: the iPAQ doesn't use the SA-1111; it has a Philips UDA1341 codec attached directly to serial port 4 on the SA-1110 processor. Take a look at the hardware design description, section 1.6, for more information. The codec, which is used in a number of designs (including Spot), will go up to 44.1kHz (16-bit, stereo). This is true even when used with the SA-1111, which supports the same sampling quality.
I placed online orders for five gifts on December 15, and only one of them flaked, but it's something of a curiosity to me why a problem should have occurred. The four that came off okay:
alltea.com - They sent email confirmation when the order was placed, and another at the time of shipping, which included the UPS tracking number.
bananarepublic.com - Shipment confirmation email containing FedEx tracking number, but they sent it as an HTML MIME part. Bah.
sees.com - Shipment confirmation email. This was the first to arrive (via priority mail).
The screwy one was not the smallest company, nor would I suppose them to have the least cash to throw at the problem: williams-sonoma.com. I received an order confirmation which contained an order tracking number. After a few days of not hearing further from the company, I checked the status of my order on the web site, and found that it was being "processed," whatever that means. I called customer service, and spoke with a personable fellow who told me that their order database granted far more purchases of this particular item than existed in inventory, and that i might expect to see my gift by January 4. I thanked him for his assistance, and cancelled the order.
I immediately went to the brick-and-mortar Williams-Sonoma store about a mile from my house, and bought the item I sought, after hearing that it was one of twelve they had in stock. This raised a question in my mind: would it have been so difficult for the W-S order steering logic to have discovered the availability of that item within walking distance of my shipping address? Why not prompt the customer service rep with this information, or maybe even notify the store to ship it locally? It would seem that, especially for fancy-ass businesses, this simple service (which has to be trivial to implement) would really add to the purchasing experience.
My next question was, how can an online company not assume that gift-like items (excluding things like industrial power generators or tanks) purchased in, say, the month before December 4/24/whatever have the potential to be related to the chanukka/xmas/random holiday? Given that, wouldn't it make sense to actively notify customers if there's even the slightest possibility that an order couldn't be filled in time? I think I recall See's giving a nod to this by automatically upgrading the shipping method to next-day or something a few days before xmas eve. I really would have appreciated this kind of notification from W-S, however, as soon as they discovered the January 4 shipping date.
The best part of the whole thing is, however, that the day after I picked up the item from the meatspace W-S store, another one arrived via FedEx, which will have to be reclaimed by FedEx next week. =)
I submit that an individual advancing this argument has likely not spent very much time on a motorcycle. Wind noise at speed is so significant that many riders opt for earplugs to reduce the ringing sensation that tends to follow long rides. As for peripheral vision, modern full-face helmets offer a sufficiently wide field of view that only periodic mirror checks are required to maintain an accurate picture of the local environment. Essentially, if a rider cannot sample sufficient information from his environment through diligent scanning with two eyeballs to manage the risk of being on a bike, that rider should park the machine.
Weigh the inconvenience of scanning against the possible consequences of a get-off at speed. While I respect the position that people should be free to make their own decisions concerning (in this case) safety gear, to somehow associate with this position the idea that a rider ought not to wear a helmet is amazing. Frankly, tossing a bike away is a terrifying experience, one which I suspect many riders in the helmet-laws-are-evil camp simply haven't [yet] experienced.
Returning to the accident-avoidance topic, a significant number (I refrain from suggesting majority because I don't have the statistic in front of me) of motorcycle "accidents" are single-vehicle. Meaning that the rider failed to take some action which would have prevented the collision/highside/&c. In the case of the broadcast personality mentioned at the top of this thread, I believe the consensus was that he selected a poor line through a turn (continuing to run in staggered formation rather than apexing single-file), encountered gravel at the outer edge of the road surface, and washed. In other words, he made an error in judgment, possibly because he lacked experience or skill, and lost control. Better sensory information would have done nothing for him, because his decision-making process was faulty. To be blunt, his gear saved him from his own stupidity.
Combining this information with a post earlier in this thread, one might say that helmet use in this instance has interfered with Darwinian selection and caused a "problem" for organ donor programs. Please consider that the subject in question is a person's life, and to casually suggest that a person deserves to have their grey matter emptied onto a guard rail is, quite simply, offensive.
One last point, which seems to have escaped the other posts on this topic, is that full-face helmets protect from airborne debris. Being thwacked in the face by a pebble launched from the SUV in front of you is, to say the least, distracting. For those who have not ridden a modern motorcycle, the steering geometry on, say, a sportbike, is rather receptive to suggestion. Meaning that an ill-timed twitch on the part of the rider offers a nonzero probability of driving into another car, or a pedestrian, or the guard rail, and so forth. Full face protection goes a long way towards avoiding this response.
I can't say if legislative enforcement of helmet use is appropriate. But when forming your own opinion, try to base it on as much information as you can gather. There are costs to society associated with motorcycling injuries, but on the other hand, the matter at hand is someone's life. There exist riders who lack the experience needed to make good decisions concerning safety gear. If you don't like legislation, attempt to find other solutions to this problem. One obvious candidate is education, offered practically for free in my state by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation.
Slashdot Mirror
I second this one.
I got a 2000-model Spire for a PowerBook G3, and it has been absolutely perfect. Good materials and construction, lots of pockets, comfortable to carry. When I switched to a PowerBook G4 17-inch this year, I couldn't bring myself to retire the bag. The aluminum monster fits with the padded sleeve removed. I was initially concerned about possible damage to the laptop, but after more than half a year of daily bus rides, the machine is in perfect condition. It's really a fantastic bag.
Since it took me more than a few minutes to find the part of the bill everyone's excited about, here's a pointer:
In the Conference Report, the change to the definition of financial institution is in Title III, Subtitle E (Sec. 374), which begins on page 76 of the PDF. The explanatory statement for that Section begins on page 112 of the PDF.
The Section in question is really just a reference to another Section of United States Code. On top of that, the PDF of this report is not searchable (it's a scanned image). Do we have an award for Information Obfuscation in Government? Why can't we at least have these reports in hypertext, with live links to the referenced laws?
That's incorrect. In 802.11, assuming all stations are on the same channel, everyone within range of an access point is in the same collision domain at that access point. (They might not be within range of one another, however.) So, for communications involving the access point, the "11Mbps" (user data rate is less than half that in practice, accounting for control frames, deferrals, randomized backoffs, ...) is shared between the stations in the Basic Service Set.
Good call!
Just to clarify, I called a local Ford dealer, who explained the page contents. The GCRW (Gross Combined Weight Rating -- GCWR?) value listed is the maximum weight rating for the vehicle, passengers, towing load, and everything else. The "weight" value is indeed the maximum towing capacity. He was unable to find a standalone vehicle weight figure.
I suppose one could conjecture about the weight of some gasoline, various fluids, and a handful of humans, then do some arithmetic on the given values to guess at a vehicle weight. In any case, I stand corrected. =)
(Emphasis added.)
Not to doubt your sincerity, but my Ranger weighs more than 2 tons. I think this is the homework you meant, where it appears that the curb weights go up to 11,000lbs., with the likely peak of the soccer mom distribution falling somewhere around 6-8,000lbs.
Just a quick correction:
802.11 uses the "carrier sense multiple access protocol with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) medium sharing mechanism." [1] The issue in contention-based wireless MACs is that collisions may not be detectable by transmitting nodes, so both Tx and Rx nodes participate in an RTS/CTS exchange prior to data transmission. This allows nearby nodes to reschedule their own communication so as to reduce the probability of collision. The side effect, as you point out, is increased latency in the actual data transmission; CSMA/CA is necessarily worse in this regard than CSMA/CD.
Of course, in 802.11b, once a node has secured the channel, it has (up to) 11Mbps to play with. I don't know how Proxim's scheme works, but presumably it trades off effective station bandwidth (each node getting 1/n or somesuch) for predictable access. For various reasons, this kind of design never took off in the wired LAN world.
-jd
[1] IEEE Std 802.11-1997 Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) specifications
In all likelihood, "GDS1110BC," meaning "SA-1110 stepping B4." I guess it could also be a "BB" part, but somehow I doubt that Compaq are sitting on a big pile of old inventory.
A few corrections here: the iPAQ doesn't use the SA-1111; it has a Philips UDA1341 codec attached directly to serial port 4 on the SA-1110 processor. Take a look at the hardware design description, section 1.6, for more information. The codec, which is used in a number of designs (including Spot), will go up to 44.1kHz (16-bit, stereo). This is true even when used with the SA-1111, which supports the same sampling quality.
- alltea.com - They sent email confirmation when the order was placed, and another at the time of shipping, which included the UPS tracking number.
- bananarepublic.com - Shipment confirmation email containing FedEx tracking number, but they sent it as an HTML MIME part. Bah.
- sees.com - Shipment confirmation email. This was the first to arrive (via priority mail).
- rei.com - No email, but arrived on time.
The screwy one was not the smallest company, nor would I suppose them to have the least cash to throw at the problem: williams-sonoma.com . I received an order confirmation which contained an order tracking number. After a few days of not hearing further from the company, I checked the status of my order on the web site, and found that it was being "processed," whatever that means. I called customer service, and spoke with a personable fellow who told me that their order database granted far more purchases of this particular item than existed in inventory, and that i might expect to see my gift by January 4. I thanked him for his assistance, and cancelled the order.I immediately went to the brick-and-mortar Williams-Sonoma store about a mile from my house, and bought the item I sought, after hearing that it was one of twelve they had in stock. This raised a question in my mind: would it have been so difficult for the W-S order steering logic to have discovered the availability of that item within walking distance of my shipping address? Why not prompt the customer service rep with this information, or maybe even notify the store to ship it locally? It would seem that, especially for fancy-ass businesses, this simple service (which has to be trivial to implement) would really add to the purchasing experience.
My next question was, how can an online company not assume that gift-like items (excluding things like industrial power generators or tanks) purchased in, say, the month before December 4/24/whatever have the potential to be related to the chanukka/xmas/random holiday? Given that, wouldn't it make sense to actively notify customers if there's even the slightest possibility that an order couldn't be filled in time? I think I recall See's giving a nod to this by automatically upgrading the shipping method to next-day or something a few days before xmas eve. I really would have appreciated this kind of notification from W-S, however, as soon as they discovered the January 4 shipping date.
The best part of the whole thing is, however, that the day after I picked up the item from the meatspace W-S store, another one arrived via FedEx, which will have to be reclaimed by FedEx next week. =)
-jd
Weigh the inconvenience of scanning against the possible consequences of a get-off at speed. While I respect the position that people should be free to make their own decisions concerning (in this case) safety gear, to somehow associate with this position the idea that a rider ought not to wear a helmet is amazing. Frankly, tossing a bike away is a terrifying experience, one which I suspect many riders in the helmet-laws-are-evil camp simply haven't [yet] experienced.
Returning to the accident-avoidance topic, a significant number (I refrain from suggesting majority because I don't have the statistic in front of me) of motorcycle "accidents" are single-vehicle. Meaning that the rider failed to take some action which would have prevented the collision/highside/&c. In the case of the broadcast personality mentioned at the top of this thread, I believe the consensus was that he selected a poor line through a turn (continuing to run in staggered formation rather than apexing single-file), encountered gravel at the outer edge of the road surface, and washed. In other words, he made an error in judgment, possibly because he lacked experience or skill, and lost control. Better sensory information would have done nothing for him, because his decision-making process was faulty. To be blunt, his gear saved him from his own stupidity.
Combining this information with a post earlier in this thread, one might say that helmet use in this instance has interfered with Darwinian selection and caused a "problem" for organ donor programs. Please consider that the subject in question is a person's life, and to casually suggest that a person deserves to have their grey matter emptied onto a guard rail is, quite simply, offensive.
One last point, which seems to have escaped the other posts on this topic, is that full-face helmets protect from airborne debris. Being thwacked in the face by a pebble launched from the SUV in front of you is, to say the least, distracting. For those who have not ridden a modern motorcycle, the steering geometry on, say, a sportbike, is rather receptive to suggestion. Meaning that an ill-timed twitch on the part of the rider offers a nonzero probability of driving into another car, or a pedestrian, or the guard rail, and so forth. Full face protection goes a long way towards avoiding this response.
I can't say if legislative enforcement of helmet use is appropriate. But when forming your own opinion, try to base it on as much information as you can gather. There are costs to society associated with motorcycling injuries, but on the other hand, the matter at hand is someone's life. There exist riders who lack the experience needed to make good decisions concerning safety gear. If you don't like legislation, attempt to find other solutions to this problem. One obvious candidate is education, offered practically for free in my state by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation.
-jd
R6