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User: morcheeba

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  1. Re:new perspective on my attempted visit on Alek's Christmas Lights: Humbug · · Score: 1

    I just read that... thanks for mentioning me!!

    I did work at the college newspaper for ~1.5 years, so I was kindof press. It's amazing to see how news stories get selected. We were the "alternative" paper at a large college, which was founded partly because we were dissatisfied with the original paper. It was basically a bunch of press releases from the college ("New dorm on schedule"), plus reviews of productions from student union ("Vampire production sucks"), news stories from the wires, and a few local stories. We did more investigative reporting (our school SGA president wasn't doing his job), but it was still hard to take the initiative ... especially near finals time.

    I did park on the street one block north of you and thought I'd walk past the gate, but changed my mind. If there had been parking near the gate, I would have walked in. And, I didn't see your house because I was expecting the blinking lights!

    You sure get a lot of geek points for the effort you put into it. It would have been more fun if you had made it a little more outrageous, like if you did the White House, your huge dry-docked yacht, or some fictional large building.

  2. new perspective on my attempted visit on Alek's Christmas Lights: Humbug · · Score: 4, Informative

    I tried to visit his house when he had the haloween lights up, but found it was in a gated community that was closed to visitors after 7pm. His house is a bit out of my way & I was a bit annoyed that this heavily-promoted house wasn't on public display, so I never returned. I wanted to see how often people where flipping the lights -- the webcam didn't refresh often enough to show that.

    His response to my post was interesting.. it seemed legit and appropriately paranoid about strangers knocking on his door (which I would never do!!).

  3. opinions on Cassini's Robot Lab Successfully Separates · · Score: 4, Funny

    Even Cassini's remarkable instruments have struggled to get at the facts.

    From what I heard, the instruments were just giving their opinions, ruminations, and vague rumors. One even broke into song, which, from a scientific viewpoint, yielded very little hard data...

  4. Re:Ding! on Judge Rejects Guilty Plea From AOL Employee · · Score: 1

    That's so much funnier if you hear the sound clip!

  5. Re:World Bridge Federation on Cognitive Enhancement Drugs · · Score: 1

    thanks for the followup!

  6. Re:Price on CCC Mods Rent-a-Bike To Allow Free Rides · · Score: 1

    Then you realize that price is in Euros, so it's really USD$4.81 per hour.

  7. World Bridge Federation on Cognitive Enhancement Drugs · · Score: 5, Informative

    The World Bridge Federation already tests for drugs and some has already lost a medal for refusing the test.

  8. Re:Sighted ahoy... on High School Dropout, Self-Taught Chip Designer · · Score: 1

    Sighted about 5 years ago... opencores.org You can get a old-skool-compatible 6502 core.

    p.s. opencores is a bit slow & looking for a new server -- they are looking for donations.

  9. Re:does this mean on World's Thinnest Flash Memory Cell Unveiled · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article said 90% less electrons, and true, electrons (or holes) make up current, but that's not what they meant. They said it was 90% less electrons stored in each cell -- This is just a small portion of the total current used in the memory.

    An ampere of current is 6.24 * 10^18 electrons/second, so to write at 12 megabits/second (USB speed) would require only 1 billion electrons/second, or 0.173 nanoamps -- the rest of the chip will probably take milliamps and dwarf the actual number of electrons flowing into the cells.

    Most of the current is used to combat the capacitance on the bit lines - since the X & Y grid wires are so close to other wires (protected by an insulator, of course), a natural capacitor forms. If you want to change the voltage on these bit lines quickly, the capacitance will demand current. You'll get the current back when you eventually try to remove the voltage, but so far it isn't really worth it to recover this current because, after resistive losses, it's at a slightly less voltage. (there are some cool schemes to pump that current into the next bitline to be accessed, but this happens more with synchronized clocks).

    Power is also dissipated by the analog sense amplifiers at the edges of the FLASH memory that convert low-level voltages to more usable digital signals.

    Power dissipation is more of a problem for processors & not FLASH memory. FLASH is all about density and cost.

  10. RC, ARC, PARC, SPARC on PARC Signs On A Partner: Fujitsu · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ok, I should have seen this coming. Fujitsu sells RC extraction tools, has licensed an ARC core and they make SPARC processors. Obviously PARC was the missing link!

  11. Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog" on Usenet Psychic Wars With Wikipedia · · Score: 1

    Saying that something sucks is an opinion

    If you measure the internal pressure of wikipedia, you could factually determine if it sucks or if it blows. My guess is that is a true statement -- if it is always getting bigger, it must be sucking in more than it expels.

  12. Re:source released to the public? on Lawsuit Filed Against Software Copyright · · Score: 1

    That's perfectly correct, but it didn't stop the DVD CCA from trying to claim it anyway.

  13. Trade Secret on Lawsuit Filed Against Software Copyright · · Score: 1

    There are a lot of companies that depend on trade secrets and copyright rather than patents for their softwares' protection -- for example, the the EDA industry). Forcing disclosure would ruin a lot of the "secret sauce" that these companies closely guard.

    Trade secrets do have backing in law (this was an aspect in the DVD CCA vs. John Does cases) and if software copyrights go away, there might be a resurgance in trade secret cases (even though programs are released to the public).

    I doubt copyright would go away; it looks like Aharonian is just trying to reform it by pointing out how whack it has become (Sonny Bono Copyright extension act, DMCA)

  14. Re:Ripped off games. on Arrests Made Near D.C. Over Modded Game Consoles · · Score: 1

    Good point. I'd say that loading 15 games on to the store's demo unit would be an excellent use for a mod chip. It allows customers to play any of those games without bothering the salespeople, and without the potential of losing or scratching the originals. As long as they had the originals that went with that machine, I'd support them.

  15. Re:These memory cells are so small... on IBM Claims World's Smallest SRAM Memory Cell · · Score: 1

    I would propose an obviously flawed, but humorous, solution to the problem at hand and try to pass it off as common knowledge :-)

  16. Re:These memory cells are so small... on IBM Claims World's Smallest SRAM Memory Cell · · Score: 1

    The traditional way around this problem is just to represent 1's as a pair of zeros. Sure, this is not the most most efficient way to store data, but for the worst case you'll only take twice the memory to store data that is totally 1's. That makes it only 1/5th the size of previous memories (not 1/10th), and it's still pretty impressive. When they solve the 1's problem, then they can get it fully down to the 1/10th size.

  17. Re:Motorcycles on Self-Adapting Traffic Lights · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try this - a magnet designed to induce voltage across the coils as you move across them. Depending on how the sensor is designed, this voltage may trigger it (otherwise, it would be using the inductance change from the frame of a car)

  18. workaround on Self-Adapting Traffic Lights · · Score: 1

    So, if I understand the article, if I got a mobile home, and towed my XXL SUV, and behind that was a boat, I could become my own group and get all the green lights.

    Or maybe I can buy a half-dozen of these and tie them at 15-foot intervals on a long rope I drag behind my car.

  19. Re:Display Tech is the key. on Upbeat on E-books · · Score: 1

    Here's the link - E Ink used the gumstix in their prototype, and joined with Philips and Sony to make the LIBRIé.

  20. Re:you could make one inexpensively on Digital Clock Without Electricity or Moving Parts · · Score: 1

    whoops, yeah, I was just trying to be funny... guess I was too subtle. Good explanation.

    This would make an excellent little project -- a three-page pdf; one page with the instructions and two pages with the grating patterns would be nice to have.This is something genuinely inventive, so I think its patent is well-deserved and should be respected. Maybe in 2012 we'll see non-patent-encumbered free versions.

    I'm thinking this would be in the vein of this cool dragon illusion that I've got on my desk.

  21. Re:you could make one inexpensively on Digital Clock Without Electricity or Moving Parts · · Score: 1

    I can't quite figure out how to use your list of objects to make one of these. The best I can figure out is that it involves taking all the objects except the laser printer and dumping them in the trash. Then you just look at the display on the laser printer and read the time. Am I missing something?

    Using a laser printer seems like cheating, though. :-)

  22. Random sample on Feds Propose National Database of College Students · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If it's just to gather better statistics, wouldn't reporting data on just 5% of a college's students be enough? Of course, this would have to be the same 5% of students tracked through their whole academic careers, but that would be simple enough to do with a hash of SSN's.

    If the government doesn't go for this proposal, I'd like to see a better reason for tracking students.

  23. live crash test dummies on Things To Do Before You Die · · Score: 1

    Apparently there was a program in Germany where, if you were convicted of a DUI and were facing some heavy jail time, you could volunteer to be a crash-test dummy and reduce your sentence. Not semi vs. volkswagen tests, but still without a seatbelt. A teacher friend of mine would show these films to his physics class.

    a reference to GERMAN CRASH FILM - Impactive film using real people to portray the effectiveness of safety belt protection in actual crash situations - 12 minutes

  24. Re:Original macs had a backup battery built in on Top Ten Persistent Design Flaws · · Score: 1

    It was also the clock battery, too -- it did both jobs.

  25. Original macs had a backup battery built in on Top Ten Persistent Design Flaws · · Score: 1

    Tog reported the "missing backup battery" problem to Apple on 5 Mar 1985, but the original macs already had this battery. It's purpose was just to power the RAM until external power was restored -- at which it would dump memory to disk and power off (from what I remember being told). Upon powerup (with stable power), it would reload memory and return to the point power was lost. Here's a page on replacing that battery with 3 AAA batteries