Just as the images of Strawberry Shortcake were being used to parody something other than Strawberry Shortcake, the trademark images of Walmart are being used to parody something other than...wait a minute...
They're parodying Walmart with images of Walmart. I call Red Herring on you, Dr Dank. This is a pretty clear example of classic parody.
Actually, I did read your post, but failed to see that you wouldn't understand the implications. A hand crank delivers power when you use it. Therefore, it can be considered a source of power. A battery with a good voltage regulator would charge via hand-crank. The reason my laptop doesn't work via handcrank is that it doesn't have a very flexible version of this cool yet unbelievably inexpensive component.
Designing a handcrank is a matter of...well, actually it's not much of a design issue. You need a bit of wire and two sticks. That's pretty much it. They're so cheap as to be free by comparison to the price of the laptop, or even the voltage regulator.
I assume you already know this. Therefore, I mentioned the only missing, nontrivial piece of the puzzle: how to get power from the handcrank, or from temperature differentials, or from a treadmill, or even from an actual electrical grid, into the laptop.
Well, if you've had good luck with those rugged laptops, maybe I'm wrong.
I've heard that they can't stand getting water spilled on them for more than a few seconds and they'll still break if you drop them more than four feet. If you've actually tried these tests and had good success, then I'd definitely like to know more about it.
As far as the voltage thing, you're obviously not knowledgable about such things. Flexible voltage regulator+any source of power at all=charging.
1) Waterproof is impossible if you want to see the screen. Shockproof is almost impossible because of the harddrive.
They're not going to be playing catch with them. What they need is something that can protect these units while not in use, like during a monsoon. This isn't an issue with the units, it's a case issue. A nice $50 waterproof, suspension mounting case will do nicely enough. Heck, if they know bad weather is coming, they could even move them to a secure location/shelter.
The battery thing is very, very easy. The thing where computers can only have one type of voltage source that we have right now is basically a scam. A fancy voltage regulator with brownout protection that will do a fixed voltage output from a wide range of inputs is about a dollar if you buy one, and about five cents if you buy more than 10000. 2) Its $100. The next one will be $100. What's the issue?
Just to nitpick, but that's wrong. The difference between what happens and why it happens is a matter of perspective.
For example, we could say a "why it happens" question as: "plants and animals become more complicated because it helps them survive."
Notice that this answers the question, "Why does evolution happen?" or we could say: "Evolution is an inherent property of natural selection." Which answers the question, "What is an effect of natural selection?"
To some degree the difference is a matter of semantics, but in general, natural laws are those things that cannot be proven in any means other than through tests - i.e. a law is not based upon any other natural laws. This is pretty much the same as a postulate in mathematics.
So the law of gravity is a law because the only way to prove it is to see that it works. There are no other laws on which it is based. Of course, scientists would very, very much like to know why it happens and convert it to a theory, but so far, no dice.
Evolution, on the other hand, is based upon the concept that limited resources lead to natural selection, which leads to evolution. The law (limited resources cause natural selection) leads to the thoery of evolution.
You use your hands, too, when you climb one, so that it's really a four legged pursuit.
If you don't use your hands, it's easy to fall off unless the angle is shallow enough that you can balance normally. If you can easily fall, it's not navigable. If you can balance normally, then you can do the same with wheels.
The manual I've got has roughly a single sentence describing the functionality of every quantum that you can use in Oracle. Some have more, some less, but that's about average.
I've got the same thing for SQL. I suppose the less important things should be missing from the Oracle manual, thereby making it the same level of verbosity? To me, level of verbosity means that if everything it can do is described in one, then everything it can do should be described in the other, and the same quantity of information should be displayed about each point.
Since Oracle has thousands of functions and its own programming language while SQL has less than fifty, it's got a bigger spec.
However, you've worn me down. I concede to your superior knowledge. Clearly, you have demonstrated that my point is false. Oracle is just an SQL engine like any other, and all that time I spent learning about it was wasted; all I really needed was to read the SQL spec.
You're right. However, my example wasn't subjective, it merely assumed that you would understand the obvious point (the one that you pointed out). Let me be more specific about what I meant.
At the same level of verbosity, Oracle needs a 600 page book, while the SQL specification needs two pages.
However, as someone who knows 12 programming languages and takes about four hours to learn a new one, let me just tell you that I spent the last week learning a language tied to a proprietary product.
It's totally different; it has its own features that nothing else does, and there are about 10 different manuals describing it.
I might also add that while the SQL specification can be written on two 8.5x11 sheets, the manual for Oracle is a 600 page book. Obviously it has a little more functionality than just any old database engine.
Re:Complex task vs. low wages
on
Camel-Riding Robots
·
· Score: 3, Informative
And possibly, or more likely, probably this indicates that you don't know what is complex for a robot and how much it costs to buy and maintain one.
Even in the States, its far cheaper to hire someone to pick strawberries, sweep walkways, mow lawns, weed gardens, clean toilets, and a number of other similar mundane tasks than it is to get robots to do it. In addition, with the exception of sweeping and mowing, those tasks are all complicated for a robot (and even in the case of sweeping and mowing, a robot usually doesn't do a very good job).
It is highly unlikely that this is a suitable task for a robot. It is a task that will likely require more maintenance (on-site robot repair team vs monthly doctor visits), human labor (robot repair team, and robot teleoperator vs small human), and cost (cost of robot, cost of paying team vs cost of labor for a small human) than the previous way.
Unlike this case, though, having an unstable aircraft meant that you could design an aircraft that is smaller, faster, and more fuel efficient.
You probably don't get these advantages from a two-legged vehicle. In addition, you can't deal with it today. For that matter, there's lots of terrain we can't deal with.
Any place that's navigable with two legs is definitely navigable with wheels, which are WAY more energy efficient, quick, and manuverable.
No. It's well known in robotics that 2-legged=bad. Maintaining static stability means the robot is slow and requires a lot of power, and dynamic stability means the robot is likely to fall over.
The is a marketing thing because people want it. They're going to fall over a lot, or they're going to be slow.
On flat terrain, wheels are better. On rocky terrain, six legged is better.
How would that work, anyway? You can't move if you're not watching commercials?
For that matter, is that even possible? I don't think that scientists have figured out how to tap the energy potential of commercials to the point where they actually generate energy of any kind. All scientists doing that kind of work end up with is the inability to be scientists any longer due to brain atrophy from watching too many commercials.
How about organically powered enhanced endoskeletons? Might be a bit more practical.
This is wrong. A publically owned (which google now is) corporation's top priority is to do what the majority of the shareholders want.
Most of the time shareholders are after money, but some are attracted at least partially by the promise of a moral company.
What you are ranting about is what you get when the shareholders are all greedy, cutthroat jerks. Great companies attract great shareholders by balancing making money with being good.
Also, who owns the majority of google? Is it the people who they sold it to, or the original owners? Hmm....
So they've got the biggest obligation to the original owners of Google, and to what they want than they do to the public shareholders.
What is it with you Aussie and this dogged obsession with stereotypes?
Not all Americans think companies exist solely to make money. Some of us are in companies for which this is not the case. Some of us have even taken paycuts to be in such companies. And of that group, there are even people who read Slashdot, such as myself.
One erroneous comment does not a nation of insightless people make.
Algorithm patents are extremely difficult to enforce. It is likely that the google people know this.
Patenting their work is allowing other people in the research world to build upon it. Any extremely honest competition will also not enter their domain, but this is not something you can count on.
From the Hibernate homepage: The Hibernate Query Language, designed as a "minimal" object-oriented extension to SQL, provides an elegant bridge between the object and relational worlds. Hibernate also allows you to express queries using native SQL or Java-based Criteria and Example queries.
So...I'm guessing you're using the phrase "SQL writer" in some new and unusual way. Does "SQL writer" mean "writes SQL output to standard output"? Do you mean "SQL optimizer?"
Hibernate can only talk to RDBMSs that use SQL. It writes SQL to them and recieves SQL from them.
Higher resistance in an RLC circuit means that you have to turn it up? And you call yourself a physicist?
The resistance problem you mention can lead to bandpass filtering, which is a nonlinear, nonuniform effect!
Oh, and as an audio tech, one thing I can add that you wouldn't know is that you don't always have the option of changing the levels, such as, for instance, when sound is coming from a microphone.
And as far as getting around it when dealing with signals in the kilohertz range, there are a few very, very easy ways to get around it:
1) Never send an unpowered non-differential signal more than half a mile.
2) Never send any -10dB non-differential signal (you get these from guitars, mostly) more than 20 feet.
The fortunate thing about this is that virtually no one actually tries to do these things, so it isn't a problem.
Incidentally, you really shouldn't send any non-differential, unshielded signal on any straight run of longer than about 3 feet, because the longer it gets, the greater the possibility that the wire picks up a radio station (I've had it happen). You don't have to buy monster to get shielding, though. Don't even have to leave the "generic" bracket.
One other thing I might add is that a lot of "high quality" cables advertise themselves as having oxygen-free copper, which actually is important. However, you'd have to work very hard to actually find any cable that isn't made of oxygen-free copper. If it's got oxygen, that means it has rust spots. How do you get rust spots into an insulated wire? You'd have to rust it on purpose.
I think that Germany taught us that having boots on the ground isn't enough after coming back from WWI and becoming the major cause of WWII.
You can't successfully impose your will upon another people who aren't willing to take it.
You missed my point about your conclusion. Let me simplify.
You said: Too many males -> male life is cannon fodder -> war is more likely.
My thought is that the premise is too specific, and also flawed. The counterargument, which I believed was easy to see, but apparently wasn't is this:
Recently, there are a lot of males in China. However, there have always been too many people in general. Therefore, if having a lot of a group makes it cannon fodder, and thus willing to send that group to war, then this should have already happened. It has not. Thus, the conclusion is flawed, specifically in the implication that surplus population leads to war.
I should also mention that there is and always has been a rather abundant population of both male and female citizens of China who are "displaced," as you said, so there has always been an ample supply of war fodder. In addition, the most densely populated country, India (which has unbelievable numbers of people living in the streets), is actually more peaceful than several of it's Middle-Eastern neighbors which are less populated.
Neither side is exactly using the latest and greatest stuff - they can't afford it.
I would consider that a war fought mostly with 20 year old technology. Consider that computers can do a lot to aid in warefare. Think about what computers were like 20 years ago. They weren't so much help back then.
As a guy who worked in a lab funded by DARPA, I can tell you that things have most certainly changed.
The Russian military had nothing compared to what is available today.
That was a different era in warfare.
Thinks have most certainly changed.
Also, civil wars are usually different. The opposition cares more about the opposing side, and are therefore willing to concede sooner in order to avoid more casualties.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm...the American company Tiger Direct is suing the American company Apple.
Obviously they'd be suing for pounds. Might be suing for yen, though - or perhaps monopoly money.
It goes without saying that they wouldn't be suing for American dollars.
Ah yes...I can see how that applies.
Just as the images of Strawberry Shortcake were being used to parody something other than Strawberry Shortcake, the trademark images of Walmart are being used to parody something other than...wait a minute...
They're parodying Walmart with images of Walmart. I call Red Herring on you, Dr Dank. This is a pretty clear example of classic parody.
Actually, I did read your post, but failed to see that you wouldn't understand the implications. A hand crank delivers power when you use it. Therefore, it can be considered a source of power. A battery with a good voltage regulator would charge via hand-crank. The reason my laptop doesn't work via handcrank is that it doesn't have a very flexible version of this cool yet unbelievably inexpensive component.
Designing a handcrank is a matter of...well, actually it's not much of a design issue. You need a bit of wire and two sticks. That's pretty much it. They're so cheap as to be free by comparison to the price of the laptop, or even the voltage regulator.
I assume you already know this. Therefore, I mentioned the only missing, nontrivial piece of the puzzle: how to get power from the handcrank, or from temperature differentials, or from a treadmill, or even from an actual electrical grid, into the laptop.
Well, if you've had good luck with those rugged laptops, maybe I'm wrong.
I've heard that they can't stand getting water spilled on them for more than a few seconds and they'll still break if you drop them more than four feet. If you've actually tried these tests and had good success, then I'd definitely like to know more about it.
As far as the voltage thing, you're obviously not knowledgable about such things.
Flexible voltage regulator+any source of power at all=charging.
1) Waterproof is impossible if you want to see the screen. Shockproof is almost impossible because of the harddrive.
They're not going to be playing catch with them. What they need is something that can protect these units while not in use, like during a monsoon. This isn't an issue with the units, it's a case issue. A nice $50 waterproof, suspension mounting case will do nicely enough. Heck, if they know bad weather is coming, they could even move them to a secure location/shelter.
The battery thing is very, very easy. The thing where computers can only have one type of voltage source that we have right now is basically a scam. A fancy voltage regulator with brownout protection that will do a fixed voltage output from a wide range of inputs is about a dollar if you buy one, and about five cents if you buy more than 10000.
2) Its $100. The next one will be $100. What's the issue?
Just to nitpick, but that's wrong. The difference between what happens and why it happens is a matter of perspective.
For example, we could say a "why it happens" question as:
"plants and animals become more complicated because it helps them survive."
Notice that this answers the question, "Why does evolution happen?"
or we could say:
"Evolution is an inherent property of natural selection."
Which answers the question, "What is an effect of natural selection?"
To some degree the difference is a matter of semantics, but in general, natural laws are those things that cannot be proven in any means other than through tests - i.e. a law is not based upon any other natural laws. This is pretty much the same as a postulate in mathematics.
So the law of gravity is a law because the only way to prove it is to see that it works. There are no other laws on which it is based. Of course, scientists would very, very much like to know why it happens and convert it to a theory, but so far, no dice.
Evolution, on the other hand, is based upon the concept that limited resources lead to natural selection, which leads to evolution. The law (limited resources cause natural selection) leads to the thoery of evolution.
Freedom is slavery, after all, and war is peace.
Along with freeing us from the bonds of cruel internet censorship, I hear they're also increasing our chocolate ration.
And if your superiors aren't intelligent enough to recognize competence, quit. Go someplace that they will be able to judge you for what you can do.
Ladders aren't generally navigable with two legs.
You use your hands, too, when you climb one, so that it's really a four legged pursuit.
If you don't use your hands, it's easy to fall off unless the angle is shallow enough that you can balance normally. If you can easily fall, it's not navigable. If you can balance normally, then you can do the same with wheels.
I'm sure you know what you're talking about.
The manual I've got has roughly a single sentence describing the functionality of every quantum that you can use in Oracle. Some have more, some less, but that's about average.
I've got the same thing for SQL. I suppose the less important things should be missing from the Oracle manual, thereby making it the same level of verbosity? To me, level of verbosity means that if everything it can do is described in one, then everything it can do should be described in the other, and the same quantity of information should be displayed about each point.
Since Oracle has thousands of functions and its own programming language while SQL has less than fifty, it's got a bigger spec.
However, you've worn me down. I concede to your superior knowledge. Clearly, you have demonstrated that my point is false. Oracle is just an SQL engine like any other, and all that time I spent learning about it was wasted; all I really needed was to read the SQL spec.
You're right. However, my example wasn't subjective, it merely assumed that you would understand the obvious point (the one that you pointed out). Let me be more specific about what I meant.
At the same level of verbosity, Oracle needs a 600 page book, while the SQL specification needs two pages.
Happy?
Mostly true.
However, as someone who knows 12 programming languages and takes about four hours to learn a new one, let me just tell you that I spent the last week learning a language tied to a proprietary product.
It's totally different; it has its own features that nothing else does, and there are about 10 different manuals describing it.
I might also add that while the SQL specification can be written on two 8.5x11 sheets, the manual for Oracle is a 600 page book. Obviously it has a little more functionality than just any old database engine.
And possibly, or more likely, probably this indicates that you don't know what is complex for a robot and how much it costs to buy and maintain one.
Even in the States, its far cheaper to hire someone to pick strawberries, sweep walkways, mow lawns, weed gardens, clean toilets, and a number of other similar mundane tasks than it is to get robots to do it. In addition, with the exception of sweeping and mowing, those tasks are all complicated for a robot (and even in the case of sweeping and mowing, a robot usually doesn't do a very good job).
It is highly unlikely that this is a suitable task for a robot. It is a task that will likely require more maintenance (on-site robot repair team vs monthly doctor visits), human labor (robot repair team, and robot teleoperator vs small human), and cost (cost of robot, cost of paying team vs cost of labor for a small human) than the previous way.
Unlike this case, though, having an unstable aircraft meant that you could design an aircraft that is smaller, faster, and more fuel efficient.
You probably don't get these advantages from a two-legged vehicle. In addition, you can't deal with it today. For that matter, there's lots of terrain we can't deal with.
Any place that's navigable with two legs is definitely navigable with wheels, which are WAY more energy efficient, quick, and manuverable.
No. It's well known in robotics that 2-legged=bad. Maintaining static stability means the robot is slow and requires a lot of power, and dynamic stability means the robot is likely to fall over.
The is a marketing thing because people want it. They're going to fall over a lot, or they're going to be slow.
On flat terrain, wheels are better. On rocky terrain, six legged is better.
This is just a fantastically expensive toy.
I don't know that I'd like that.
How would that work, anyway? You can't move if you're not watching commercials?
For that matter, is that even possible? I don't think that scientists have figured out how to tap the energy potential of commercials to the point where they actually generate energy of any kind. All scientists doing that kind of work end up with is the inability to be scientists any longer due to brain atrophy from watching too many commercials.
How about organically powered enhanced endoskeletons? Might be a bit more practical.
This is wrong. A publically owned (which google now is) corporation's top priority is to do what the majority of the shareholders want.
Most of the time shareholders are after money, but some are attracted at least partially by the promise of a moral company.
What you are ranting about is what you get when the shareholders are all greedy, cutthroat jerks. Great companies attract great shareholders by balancing making money with being good.
Also, who owns the majority of google? Is it the people who they sold it to, or the original owners? Hmm....
So they've got the biggest obligation to the original owners of Google, and to what they want than they do to the public shareholders.
What is it with you Aussie and this dogged obsession with stereotypes?
Not all Americans think companies exist solely to make money. Some of us are in companies for which this is not the case. Some of us have even taken paycuts to be in such companies. And of that group, there are even people who read Slashdot, such as myself.
One erroneous comment does not a nation of insightless people make.
Algorithm patents are extremely difficult to enforce. It is likely that the google people know this.
Patenting their work is allowing other people in the research world to build upon it. Any extremely honest competition will also not enter their domain, but this is not something you can count on.
From the Hibernate homepage:
The Hibernate Query Language, designed as a "minimal" object-oriented extension to SQL, provides an elegant bridge between the object and relational worlds. Hibernate also allows you to express queries using native SQL or Java-based Criteria and Example queries.
So...I'm guessing you're using the phrase "SQL writer" in some new and unusual way. Does "SQL writer" mean "writes SQL output to standard output"? Do you mean "SQL optimizer?"
Hibernate can only talk to RDBMSs that use SQL. It writes SQL to them and recieves SQL from them.
How about a water?
Deionized/distilled water+ionizing airfilter in the air, maybe? Probably good enough to do the trick, and you don't have to pay for anything special.
Remember, water is the ultimate solute (even when you don't have access to things that actually dissolve in water, some still does).
Higher resistance in an RLC circuit means that you have to turn it up? And you call yourself a physicist?
The resistance problem you mention can lead to bandpass filtering, which is a nonlinear, nonuniform effect!
Oh, and as an audio tech, one thing I can add that you wouldn't know is that you don't always have the option of changing the levels, such as, for instance, when sound is coming from a microphone.
And as far as getting around it when dealing with signals in the kilohertz range, there are a few very, very easy ways to get around it:
1) Never send an unpowered non-differential signal more than half a mile.
2) Never send any -10dB non-differential signal (you get these from guitars, mostly) more than 20 feet.
The fortunate thing about this is that virtually no one actually tries to do these things, so it isn't a problem.
Incidentally, you really shouldn't send any non-differential, unshielded signal on any straight run of longer than about 3 feet, because the longer it gets, the greater the possibility that the wire picks up a radio station (I've had it happen). You don't have to buy monster to get shielding, though. Don't even have to leave the "generic" bracket.
One other thing I might add is that a lot of "high quality" cables advertise themselves as having oxygen-free copper, which actually is important. However, you'd have to work very hard to actually find any cable that isn't made of oxygen-free copper. If it's got oxygen, that means it has rust spots. How do you get rust spots into an insulated wire? You'd have to rust it on purpose.
I think that Germany taught us that having boots on the ground isn't enough after coming back from WWI and becoming the major cause of WWII.
You can't successfully impose your will upon another people who aren't willing to take it.
You missed my point about your conclusion. Let me simplify.
You said:
Too many males -> male life is cannon fodder -> war is more likely.
My thought is that the premise is too specific, and also flawed. The counterargument, which I believed was easy to see, but apparently wasn't is this:
Recently, there are a lot of males in China. However, there have always been too many people in general. Therefore, if having a lot of a group makes it cannon fodder, and thus willing to send that group to war, then this should have already happened. It has not. Thus, the conclusion is flawed, specifically in the implication that surplus population leads to war.
I should also mention that there is and always has been a rather abundant population of both male and female citizens of China who are "displaced," as you said, so there has always been an ample supply of war fodder. In addition, the most densely populated country, India (which has unbelievable numbers of people living in the streets), is actually more peaceful than several of it's Middle-Eastern neighbors which are less populated.
Neither side is exactly using the latest and greatest stuff - they can't afford it.
I would consider that a war fought mostly with 20 year old technology. Consider that computers can do a lot to aid in warefare. Think about what computers were like 20 years ago. They weren't so much help back then.
As a guy who worked in a lab funded by DARPA, I can tell you that things have most certainly changed.
The Russian military had nothing compared to what is available today.
That was a different era in warfare.
Thinks have most certainly changed.
Also, civil wars are usually different. The opposition cares more about the opposing side, and are therefore willing to concede sooner in order to avoid more casualties.