Yep, usually they are. It prevents a paperclip jammed in the connector from damaging or shutting down your whole computer. Here's an example part to do that
The Seagate 2.5" 4200 rpm (100GB) drives require: (data taken from this pdf overview) * 5.0W at startup * 2.3W during seek * 2.1W reading/writing * 1.0W Idle * 0.2W Standby
Except for startup, that's all under 5v *.5A = 2.5W that USB provides. That surge could easily be handled by a rechargable AA battery or an ultra-capacitor. Or, in a desperate pinch, require 2 USB connectors -- it's still better than lugging a power cube.
I just got my xbox360 sunday, and I've had no heat problems, but there are tons of problems with the UI. Oh, where do I start?
Downloads are fux0red. You can only download one at a time, and while that's happening you can't do anything else. There is no time display, only a percentage display. Not only is the percentage display grossly wrong, if you don't touch the box (because you can't do anything else), the screensaver kicks in and shows you the menu underneath -- totally useless. Downloads instantly start at 5% done. Abort and restart it, and it'll automatically be 50% done. Abort and restart it again and it'll be 100% done and quit downloading.
Once you get a download, the default action is to re-download it. Which, if you accept this, it'll delete (without warning) and start again. The default action should be "go to my download". No, actually, the default action should be "play my download", but they don't have that -- you have to go through 2 more menus to actually play it.
The box constantly logs me in and out - some things need me in, some out.
Menu items are inconsistent. Even on the same menu, some items are highlighted by brightening the center, others are highlighted by brightening the edges.
When you quit a game, the OS doesn't know if you've saved the game or not. So, it'll always warn you that you are about to lose data, even if you haven't started a game. A little communication between the OS and games, please!
The unit is really loud. Much louder than my PC or my microwave.
The only auto-power off option is "never" or "6 hours". I'd like it to power off after downloading my games -- I hope 6 hours is enough -- and preferably ASAP because the fans are really loud.
There is no headphones jack. I use it with my monitor, which supports HDTV but not audio.
There are some things you do that apparently require it to reboot (it doesn't tell you), which autostarts the game. Frustrating if you say "do xxx" and it starts the game instead of going to the menu you were previously at.
The controller is genius. It feels solid and comfortable, the radio works well. Graphics have been a letdown compared to my PC. The software is amazingly half-baked considering they've had 4 months after the release date to fix it.
Not exactly. Archive.org doesn't store large binary files. I found this out when downloading tools for an obscure processor - they had the smaller tools, but not the larger ones.
Try to download it from archive.org -- http://www.oldversion.com/downloadx/itunes41.exe"> http://web.archive.org/web/20060307125009/http://w ww.oldversion.com/downloadx/itunes41.exe -- it won't work. But, if you strip off the beginning of the URL, you can find out where oldversion.com used to store it -- in/dowloadx/itunes41.exe. It turns out oldversion.com still has it at this location and you can still download it from them.
Think about it. If someone were involved in the shifting of huge amounts of funds around and planning the next WTC, Pentagon, Waco or Bali bombing, you mean you all wouldn't want to know about it? Uhuh. Right.
The WTC attack cost... 9 cross-country plane tickets. About $3000 if you're thrifty. That's a pretty low threshold to track -- well below that of someone who buys an '92 toyota.
I liked your post, but I have no idea why you say "bullcrap". You're saying that a 1/2" diameter wire would only rise 20 degrees K, so it wouldn't be damaged. Nice work - I agree. But then you say that the conductor is probably only 1/1000th the resistance... I'm not sure what that means -- you must be talking about a parallel path because the current would be the same through a series path. 1/1000th the resistance contradicts your next statement -- lower resistance would take the majority of the power, so I assume you mean it it has higher resistance and takes 1/1000th the power. So, it sounds like you're agreeing to flow through a parallel ionization path and saying it would take 999/1000th the power.
So, thanks for bringing numbers to the table, but I'm confused about your first word.
Lighting rods don't necessarily conduct all of the lightning's current. One idea is that they conduct some current and ionize the air around them -- then the bulk of the current flows through that ionized air (just like the ionized air lightning usually flows through). Another theory is that they work to prevent lightning. This is one of those things that has led to much debate.
One could easily make the argument that it is the ISPs that are getting the free lunch. If there was no content, they would be out of business. In the 1980's, before the internet and when dial-up BBS ruled, the ISPs were the one who had to produce the content. AOL hired news people, GEnie had to manage their own forums, The Source actually had to be The Source for information. Now all the content is produced by other people, and most of it is now provided free (like this post).
I say the ISPs should pay me money because I'm providing a valuable service to their customers, which makes them want to pay for broadband. Of course, that's only valid if they cared about customers. In reality, they treat my interesting content as a cost because they have to transport it. Ideally, they'd like to have to transfer no data and still get a monthly payment from their subscribers.
I tried to by some earbuds at a Lawsons (Like a 7-11), and the only ones in stereo were a pair of white Sony earbuds.
I ordered my nano on the first day it came out (I'd been waiting...), and went about 2 weeks after getting mine -- saw a few other people with them in Japan, too!
You are a human being. Your form factor is an irreducable.
Good point. Unless you're saying I'm fat and am never going to be skinny;-)
I guess we should have come up with better examples -- some things are constrained by human form factors (car, violin, piano), and others aren't as much (mp3 player, sheets of paper).
You're constraining the possible solutions to fit your notion of the technology.
It's like saying "the world's smallest boulder is so small that it fits in a hat box!"
I've got a motorcycle that runs circles around most cars -- it is bigger than a peanut, but accelerates faster than a supercar and still gets 40 mpg. (my other bike is faster than 85% of all cars, but gets 90 mpg and is 1/5th the cost of a stripped civic). The only reason you would think it's useless is because it isn't a car. But, it does everything I want it to. (I don't ask it to haul stuff or work in bad weather - I have a car for that).
I've got a camera that I use as a scanner - it's much smaller and totally portable. It scans notebooks and huge chaulk boards with equal ease. It operates on a totally different principle than most scanners (focus at infinity instead of near-field) but it's a viable alternative.
So, I don't think there is a right size for most technologies if you don't unnecessarily constrain them.
Who knows... a 4" mind-controlled violin could be a really cool instrument to play while jogging!
Metrowerks was bought by Freescale (aka Motorola) and sold off its x86 technology, presumably to focus on embedded applications of moto's 68K/PPC. The other half of their business is game development systems, where 2 of those systems are PPC (although IBM-sourced, not Moto) and the other two (PS2 & PSP) are RISC.
I still don't know why they dropped out of the OSX market - maybe competing against Apple's "free" tools was too tough. They currently aren't competing with MS, either.
I found these two wikipedia articles really informative...
Far side of the moon... the far side has a different texture compared to the near side - it is battered and densely-cratered, and doesn't have the dark spots (maria) that the near side has. The crust of the Moon is 40 km thicker on the far side.
Libration... because of the way the moon rotates, we can actually see 59% its surface -- not the 50% you'd expect. See this excellent graphic for an explanation.
20% Sony 20% Kodak 16% Canon 12% Olympus 32%... others
There is lots of money to be made there. Camera phones will intrude, but a percentage of people (like me) will insist on lenses that are too big to fit on a phone.
That's 100k per block, not for the entire drive. The wear-leveling algorithms will make sure that even if you constantly re-write the same file, that part of the memory won't get worn out.
With a 512-byte erase block size, that is 419 billion writes. With a 4K erase block size, that's 52 billion writes. Use a 20GB drive instead of 2GB, and you'll get 10x the writes. And, the computer can warn you before the memory stops re-writing.
5 trillion writes is 10,000 writes/second for 13 years.
Why was this modded insightful? It's just namecalling and has no information.
Honestly, I would like to know why you think IntelliJ IDEA and the other IDEs are better than XCode. What features do you find important that are missing, or was there some unliveable annoyance? What language do you code in, and what level of debugger support are you expecting? IDEA doesn't seem to support C, so while I would get the benefit of less suckage compared to Xcode, I would have to switch programming languages.
Bellows are the accordian-shaped things you see in the old-time cameras between the lens and the film (old time example). They allow the lens to move without letting in light.
Here's a good explanation of bellows for nikon cameras. Optically, it is the same as a pringles can, but you can adjust the distance easily -- this sets the amount of zoom and the focus at the same time. (Basically, set it for the zoom you want, then move the object until it is in focus)
Slashdot Mirror
That would help in detection, but what's to stop the bot from using the host-computer's credentials? Most machines are set up to send email already.
Yep, usually they are. It prevents a paperclip jammed in the connector from damaging or shutting down your whole computer. Here's an example part to do that
The Seagate 2.5" 4200 rpm (100GB) drives require: (data taken from this pdf overview)
.5A = 2.5W that USB provides. That surge could easily be handled by a rechargable AA battery or an ultra-capacitor. Or, in a desperate pinch, require 2 USB connectors -- it's still better than lugging a power cube.
* 5.0W at startup
* 2.3W during seek
* 2.1W reading/writing
* 1.0W Idle
* 0.2W Standby
Except for startup, that's all under 5v *
was able to mount the drive without use of extra power cables.
That is more information than I need to know. I won't even ask which port you used.
The controller is genius. It feels solid and comfortable, the radio works well.
Graphics have been a letdown compared to my PC.
The software is amazingly half-baked considering they've had 4 months after the release date to fix it.
... you still have to eat something at home. Oh wait, I forgot about this.
Not exactly. Archive.org doesn't store large binary files. I found this out when downloading tools for an obscure processor - they had the smaller tools, but not the larger ones.
> http://web.archive.org/web/20060307125009/http://w ww.oldversion.com/downloadx/itunes41.exe -- it won't work. But, if you strip off the beginning of the URL, you can find out where oldversion.com used to store it -- in /dowloadx/itunes41.exe. It turns out oldversion.com still has it at this location and you can still download it from them.
Try to download it from archive.org -- http://www.oldversion.com/downloadx/itunes41.exe"
I can't resist a good troll...
Think about it. If someone were involved in the shifting of huge amounts of funds around and planning the next WTC, Pentagon, Waco or Bali bombing, you mean you all wouldn't want to know about it? Uhuh. Right.
The WTC attack cost... 9 cross-country plane tickets. About $3000 if you're thrifty. That's a pretty low threshold to track -- well below that of someone who buys an '92 toyota.
Cool. I learned something, thanks.
:-)
ps. I'm so full of crap, you could have been responding to any one of a number of things!
I liked your post, but I have no idea why you say "bullcrap". You're saying that a 1/2" diameter wire would only rise 20 degrees K, so it wouldn't be damaged. Nice work - I agree. But then you say that the conductor is probably only 1/1000th the resistance... I'm not sure what that means -- you must be talking about a parallel path because the current would be the same through a series path. 1/1000th the resistance contradicts your next statement -- lower resistance would take the majority of the power, so I assume you mean it it has higher resistance and takes 1/1000th the power. So, it sounds like you're agreeing to flow through a parallel ionization path and saying it would take 999/1000th the power.
So, thanks for bringing numbers to the table, but I'm confused about your first word.
Lighting rods don't necessarily conduct all of the lightning's current. One idea is that they conduct some current and ionize the air around them -- then the bulk of the current flows through that ionized air (just like the ionized air lightning usually flows through). Another theory is that they work to prevent lightning. This is one of those things that has led to much debate.
Good point: WITHOUT CONTENT, THEY ARE USELESS!!
One could easily make the argument that it is the ISPs that are getting the free lunch. If there was no content, they would be out of business. In the 1980's, before the internet and when dial-up BBS ruled, the ISPs were the one who had to produce the content. AOL hired news people, GEnie had to manage their own forums, The Source actually had to be The Source for information. Now all the content is produced by other people, and most of it is now provided free (like this post).
I say the ISPs should pay me money because I'm providing a valuable service to their customers, which makes them want to pay for broadband. Of course, that's only valid if they cared about customers. In reality, they treat my interesting content as a cost because they have to transport it. Ideally, they'd like to have to transfer no data and still get a monthly payment from their subscribers.
I tried to by some earbuds at a Lawsons (Like a 7-11), and the only ones in stereo were a pair of white Sony earbuds.
I ordered my nano on the first day it came out (I'd been waiting...), and went about 2 weeks after getting mine -- saw a few other people with them in Japan, too!
That's the National Semiconductor Logo ... national.com
National made most of the electronics for Microsoft's spot watch.
You are a human being. Your form factor is an irreducable.
;-)
Good point. Unless you're saying I'm fat and am never going to be skinny
I guess we should have come up with better examples -- some things are constrained by human form factors (car, violin, piano), and others aren't as much (mp3 player, sheets of paper).
You're constraining the possible solutions to fit your notion of the technology.
It's like saying "the world's smallest boulder is so small that it fits in a hat box!"
I've got a motorcycle that runs circles around most cars -- it is bigger than a peanut, but accelerates faster than a supercar and still gets 40 mpg. (my other bike is faster than 85% of all cars, but gets 90 mpg and is 1/5th the cost of a stripped civic). The only reason you would think it's useless is because it isn't a car. But, it does everything I want it to. (I don't ask it to haul stuff or work in bad weather - I have a car for that).
I've got a camera that I use as a scanner - it's much smaller and totally portable. It scans notebooks and huge chaulk boards with equal ease. It operates on a totally different principle than most scanners (focus at infinity instead of near-field) but it's a viable alternative.
So, I don't think there is a right size for most technologies if you don't unnecessarily constrain them.
Who knows... a 4" mind-controlled violin could be a really cool instrument to play while jogging!
Metrowerks was bought by Freescale (aka Motorola) and sold off its x86 technology, presumably to focus on embedded applications of moto's 68K/PPC. The other half of their business is game development systems, where 2 of those systems are PPC (although IBM-sourced, not Moto) and the other two (PS2 & PSP) are RISC.
I still don't know why they dropped out of the OSX market - maybe competing against Apple's "free" tools was too tough. They currently aren't competing with MS, either.
I found these two wikipedia articles really informative...
... the far side has a different texture compared to the near side - it is battered and densely-cratered, and doesn't have the dark spots (maria) that the near side has. The crust of the Moon is 40 km thicker on the far side.
... because of the way the moon rotates, we can actually see 59% its surface -- not the 50% you'd expect. See this excellent graphic for an explanation.
Far side of the moon
Libration
Oh, he didn't mention the most shocking part of the move. Those limbs? THEY'RE MADE FROM PEOPLE!!!
Yahoo Auctions beat Ebay to the Japanese market by only 5 months, and it has dominated there.
The non-SLR digital camera landscape is very different:
... others
(year-old statistics, US-only)
20% Sony
20% Kodak
16% Canon
12% Olympus
32%
There is lots of money to be made there. Camera phones will intrude, but a percentage of people (like me) will insist on lenses that are too big to fit on a phone.
Bingo. I hadn't thought of that, but there is no reason the wear-levelling algorithm can't touch less-used blocks, so it's not a problem.
That's 100k per block, not for the entire drive. The wear-leveling algorithms will make sure that even if you constantly re-write the same file, that part of the memory won't get worn out.
With a 512-byte erase block size, that is 419 billion writes. With a 4K erase block size, that's 52 billion writes. Use a 20GB drive instead of 2GB, and you'll get 10x the writes. And, the computer can warn you before the memory stops re-writing.
5 trillion writes is 10,000 writes/second for 13 years.
Why was this modded insightful? It's just namecalling and has no information.
Honestly, I would like to know why you think IntelliJ IDEA and the other IDEs are better than XCode. What features do you find important that are missing, or was there some unliveable annoyance? What language do you code in, and what level of debugger support are you expecting? IDEA doesn't seem to support C, so while I would get the benefit of less suckage compared to Xcode, I would have to switch programming languages.
Your post had potential...
I know the parent knows this, but thanks!
Bellows are the accordian-shaped things you see in the old-time cameras between the lens and the film (old time example). They allow the lens to move without letting in light.
Here's a good explanation of bellows for nikon cameras. Optically, it is the same as a pringles can, but you can adjust the distance easily -- this sets the amount of zoom and the focus at the same time. (Basically, set it for the zoom you want, then move the object until it is in focus)