"The Micro plug design is rated for at least 10,000 connect-disconnect cycles"
Really? If you're not careful it's pretty easy to wreck a connector on a mobile phone or get it to the state where you have to wriggle it around before it works (Various instances seen.)
There's a definite need for a universal standard but microUSB is too fragile.
"They got everybody hyped-up and then let Vista be installed on machine incapable of running it decently"
It was worse than that. They DEGRADED the allowable specification after manufacturer pressure to hit certain price points. Vista booted up, but didn't "run" on the underspecced hardware, as much as asthmatically crawl.
I would like to say that this glaring error is what forced them to go back and optimise for lower specced hardware on Win7, but it wasn't. The main driver for making Win7 leaner was the appearance of Netbooks, which emphatically would not run Vista at all.
Even now I see a huge number of underspecced laptops on the market -something which apple won't allow. Most of MSes woes seem to be self-inflicted. (I'm no MS fan, but the OS does have some merits and it's certainly responsible for the ubiquitousness of personal computers today)
where have you been for the last 10 years?
It's still a problem even if it's not in _your_ inbox anymore - and it's MUCH more complicated than you might think to keep it out without blocking wanted mail.
european cars are designed with SRS multistage airbags. They won't fire if the computer thinks they're not needed (or if the crash is off-angled too far). I T-boned an idiot who ran a stop with an impact speed of about 20mph (pretty much renmoved his front end) and the bag didn't go off. The car was a writeoff anyway due to the entire front end being warped about 4 inches.
Not to mention all those people in an obscure military installatiom (bletchley park) who invented the first digital computers and were pretty much reading encrypted german comms in almost real time throughout most of the last half of the war. Even the metadata was useful, let alone the content.
A decent 12V switchmode supply (from a blown LCD monitor) is also useful for powering a bunch of consumer-grade equipment. I have a couple of 65W ones powering my AV stack (DVB decoder, DVS decoder, Router, Cordless phone base, etc etc etc and have measured 30W less consumption than when using wall warts - the average low power PSU has shockingly poor efficiency AND regulation.
That applies in enterprise structures a lot of the time too. There's a shedload of unnecessary gold plating going on and the devices STILL have badcap issues.
Or rip and replace the onboard electrolytic caps. These are inveriably what fails (crap external power supplies have the same issue, I've encountered a number of "dead routers" which were actually dead PSUs)
CAVEAT: none of this makes a blind bit of difference if the OP is in an area prone to lightning strikes. UPSes won't help either. A hit on or near the phone line will induce enough voltage into the circuit to overwhelm any consumer-grade electronic device on the end (In the days when cordless phones were worth servicing I used to regularly open them up to fine BIG BLACK track marks across the inside of the case from where the phone line went in, to wehere the power went in.
A cubesat is made up of one or more 10x10x10cm blocks AT LAUNCH.
Mass is entirely dependent on how those blocks are filled up.
Flying configuration is entirely dependent on how they're designed to pack. Quite a few of them unfold quite large solar panels and linear antennas once released into orbit - and you're not constrained to ONE block, just the block-based configuration (Many larger cubesats are made up of 3 blocks. OTOH some cubesats may disperse into a bunch of smaller devices once released.)
Launch cost is based on the volume taken up and/or the mass (there is limited space available and limited mass capability, so you have to fit within both constraints)
They're intended for quick'n'dirty development. The reason they're so cheap is that there's no guarantee of delivery in any desired orbital plane, no interfacing with the launcher (except in the physical sense of being loaded into a carrier), and comms with them is your problem from the outset. They're expected to be entirely self-contained and be able to sort themselves out once they discover they're free-floating.
(They're also cheap because 99% of them are prototypes made with COTS gear and duct tape, not subjected to any kind of space/launch qualification except those the maker decides to run. For any other type of launch there are dozens of prototypes made, plus flight spares and virtually _everything_ down to screw level is custom made and space rated over hundred of tests (space rating an instrument such as an ion detector takes several months in a vacuum chamber over extreme temperature excursions and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Launch rating requires similar tests on high powered vibration tables more than easily capable of turning your insides to jelly should you be silly enough to sit on one while running (There's one in the same building as I am and everyone knows when it's in use). On top of that there are ultra-precision requirements for everything, to ensure that it all assembles correctly - but that doesn't always stop things being installed backwards (eg gyro sensors on a Proton, the parachute dispensing sensor on New Horizons or the swapping of camera assemblies between spirit and opportunity despite precautions being taken at every step of the way to prevent exactly that occurance) because all the engineering in the world is no use if it doesn't include "design for assembly".)
Which is a lot better than their UK versions, who are appointed from within the industries theyr' supposed to regulate and whose career paths go back inside those same industries. Can you say "regulatory capture"?
"So, I take it the Postal Service is a government-enforced monopoly with no competitive pressures in the UK too?"
Not for much longer. The market is in the process of being completely deregulated down to letter level.
That's Royalmail though. The Post Office is a commercially run franchising operation which acts as an agency for a number of goverenment deprtments and other companies. Need to pay your gas bill in cash? Take it to the post office. Collect your pension? Go to the post office. etc etc.
There's thousands of times as much money involved handling this stuff as there is merely processing the few letters and parcels posted privately these days.
BTW these robust denials of problems when TV documentary teams expose them are normal liability-limiting bluff. People will be exonerated, freed and compensation paid. The spokesman will be quietly thrown in fron of a bus.
The natural end result of capitalism is monopolistic oligarchy and lack of innovation.
In times gone by, the US govt would periodically intervene to restore fair competition. Most recently the government has suffered regulatory capture.
The USA may be many things, but a capitalist system it isn't. The New Deal was socialism for starters.
Railguns will change that balance - IF the USN's contractors can develop ones which don't self destruct after a few shots - something that's been a problem since the nazis started playing with them in the 1930s
Of course, given the accuracy of many moden ballistic missles, it's perfectly possible to plant one on a flattop's deck with a conventional warhead from halfway around the world and _nothing_ the USN has in its arsenal can defend against that.
The same New Zealand whose government response to discoveries that their own spy agency have been illegally looking at citizens and residents was to make it all ok by passing a retroactive law making it perfectly legal?
I guess that's more honest than getting the information from the other agency and pretending it's ok to bypass the law that way.
(BTW, retroactive laws are nasty, Imagine finding your house has been taken off you with one. It can be done)
If Forbes is coming up with this kind of dross then it's little wonder economics is a mess.
If a large number of people are willing to exchange bitcoins for other items, then it's a form of currency.
"Money" (Actually, "currency") is only as good as confidence in it, no matter what's backing it. The Roman Empire lasted about 18 months once confidence was lost in the currency (If noone will accept your coin then it has zero value - ironic as the reason it came to be rejected was a direct result of attempts to maintain confidence in the currency)
CableCos are very interested when ships anchor over their lines - mainly so they can bill the owners for repairs.
Captains who ignore warning markers usually end up wit huge liabilities attached.
Dickheads don't just lase passing aircraft. I got flashed while driving a few weeks ago and it _HURT_ - badly enough that I swerved involuntarily.
This was very near a freeway interchange and I could easily see the idiots doing it off the overbridge "to see what happened".
Or what would have been deadly (or extremely disfiguring) injuries become mitigated down to neck injuries.
My doctor pointed out that without a helmet I'd have no skull/face left, instead of a bunch of soft tissue damage from the twisting action as it hit the road. One of my teachers at high school wasn't wearing a helmet the day he kissed the road and what's left of his face is a sobering reminder of why they're a good idea.
One can use the same argument to claim that car safety equpiment increases injury rates and decreases death rates.
Like "pixie dust"?
A lot of this stuff does end up in available technology, but you don't hear about it because companies licensing it don't want to admit it's an IBM invention.
I watched the theatrical release as a kid, i can clearly remember thinking "episode IV? I've mssed the first 3!"
Being (until my mid-30s) slightly obsessional about seeing movies and reading books in the order they were released....
Slashdot Mirror
"The Micro plug design is rated for at least 10,000 connect-disconnect cycles"
Really? If you're not careful it's pretty easy to wreck a connector on a mobile phone or get it to the state where you have to wriggle it around before it works (Various instances seen.)
There's a definite need for a universal standard but microUSB is too fragile.
It was worse than that. They DEGRADED the allowable specification after manufacturer pressure to hit certain price points. Vista booted up, but didn't "run" on the underspecced hardware, as much as asthmatically crawl.
I would like to say that this glaring error is what forced them to go back and optimise for lower specced hardware on Win7, but it wasn't. The main driver for making Win7 leaner was the appearance of Netbooks, which emphatically would not run Vista at all.
Even now I see a huge number of underspecced laptops on the market -something which apple won't allow. Most of MSes woes seem to be self-inflicted. (I'm no MS fan, but the OS does have some merits and it's certainly responsible for the ubiquitousness of personal computers today)
where have you been for the last 10 years? It's still a problem even if it's not in _your_ inbox anymore - and it's MUCH more complicated than you might think to keep it out without blocking wanted mail.
european cars are designed with SRS multistage airbags. They won't fire if the computer thinks they're not needed (or if the crash is off-angled too far). I T-boned an idiot who ran a stop with an impact speed of about 20mph (pretty much renmoved his front end) and the bag didn't go off. The car was a writeoff anyway due to the entire front end being warped about 4 inches.
And it's rapidly heading in that direction again.
Not to mention all those people in an obscure military installatiom (bletchley park) who invented the first digital computers and were pretty much reading encrypted german comms in almost real time throughout most of the last half of the war. Even the metadata was useful, let alone the content.
A decent 12V switchmode supply (from a blown LCD monitor) is also useful for powering a bunch of consumer-grade equipment. I have a couple of 65W ones powering my AV stack (DVB decoder, DVS decoder, Router, Cordless phone base, etc etc etc and have measured 30W less consumption than when using wall warts - the average low power PSU has shockingly poor efficiency AND regulation.
That applies in enterprise structures a lot of the time too. There's a shedload of unnecessary gold plating going on and the devices STILL have badcap issues.
Or rip and replace the onboard electrolytic caps. These are inveriably what fails (crap external power supplies have the same issue, I've encountered a number of "dead routers" which were actually dead PSUs) CAVEAT: none of this makes a blind bit of difference if the OP is in an area prone to lightning strikes. UPSes won't help either. A hit on or near the phone line will induce enough voltage into the circuit to overwhelm any consumer-grade electronic device on the end (In the days when cordless phones were worth servicing I used to regularly open them up to fine BIG BLACK track marks across the inside of the case from where the phone line went in, to wehere the power went in.
Correction:
A cubesat is made up of one or more 10x10x10cm blocks AT LAUNCH.
Mass is entirely dependent on how those blocks are filled up.
Flying configuration is entirely dependent on how they're designed to pack. Quite a few of them unfold quite large solar panels and linear antennas once released into orbit - and you're not constrained to ONE block, just the block-based configuration (Many larger cubesats are made up of 3 blocks. OTOH some cubesats may disperse into a bunch of smaller devices once released.)
Launch cost is based on the volume taken up and/or the mass (there is limited space available and limited mass capability, so you have to fit within both constraints)
They're intended for quick'n'dirty development. The reason they're so cheap is that there's no guarantee of delivery in any desired orbital plane, no interfacing with the launcher (except in the physical sense of being loaded into a carrier), and comms with them is your problem from the outset. They're expected to be entirely self-contained and be able to sort themselves out once they discover they're free-floating.
(They're also cheap because 99% of them are prototypes made with COTS gear and duct tape, not subjected to any kind of space/launch qualification except those the maker decides to run. For any other type of launch there are dozens of prototypes made, plus flight spares and virtually _everything_ down to screw level is custom made and space rated over hundred of tests (space rating an instrument such as an ion detector takes several months in a vacuum chamber over extreme temperature excursions and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Launch rating requires similar tests on high powered vibration tables more than easily capable of turning your insides to jelly should you be silly enough to sit on one while running (There's one in the same building as I am and everyone knows when it's in use). On top of that there are ultra-precision requirements for everything, to ensure that it all assembles correctly - but that doesn't always stop things being installed backwards (eg gyro sensors on a Proton, the parachute dispensing sensor on New Horizons or the swapping of camera assemblies between spirit and opportunity despite precautions being taken at every step of the way to prevent exactly that occurance) because all the engineering in the world is no use if it doesn't include "design for assembly".)
Which is a lot better than their UK versions, who are appointed from within the industries theyr' supposed to regulate and whose career paths go back inside those same industries. Can you say "regulatory capture"?
Not for much longer. The market is in the process of being completely deregulated down to letter level.
That's Royalmail though. The Post Office is a commercially run franchising operation which acts as an agency for a number of goverenment deprtments and other companies. Need to pay your gas bill in cash? Take it to the post office. Collect your pension? Go to the post office. etc etc.
There's thousands of times as much money involved handling this stuff as there is merely processing the few letters and parcels posted privately these days.
BTW these robust denials of problems when TV documentary teams expose them are normal liability-limiting bluff. People will be exonerated, freed and compensation paid. The spokesman will be quietly thrown in fron of a bus.
The natural end result of capitalism is monopolistic oligarchy and lack of innovation. In times gone by, the US govt would periodically intervene to restore fair competition. Most recently the government has suffered regulatory capture. The USA may be many things, but a capitalist system it isn't. The New Deal was socialism for starters.
Railguns will change that balance - IF the USN's contractors can develop ones which don't self destruct after a few shots - something that's been a problem since the nazis started playing with them in the 1930s Of course, given the accuracy of many moden ballistic missles, it's perfectly possible to plant one on a flattop's deck with a conventional warhead from halfway around the world and _nothing_ the USN has in its arsenal can defend against that.
The same New Zealand whose government response to discoveries that their own spy agency have been illegally looking at citizens and residents was to make it all ok by passing a retroactive law making it perfectly legal?
I guess that's more honest than getting the information from the other agency and pretending it's ok to bypass the law that way.
(BTW, retroactive laws are nasty, Imagine finding your house has been taken off you with one. It can be done)
"He talked to the civilian Chinese newspaper about the US government hacking Chinese civilian servers."
Which if true immediately puts all chinese-origin attacks on any target in the world under a cloud of "false flag" doubt.
It wouldn't be the first time someone has thrown a hand grenade into their own market square and blamed the other side.
then you have nothing to fear from whistleblowers
If Forbes is coming up with this kind of dross then it's little wonder economics is a mess.
If a large number of people are willing to exchange bitcoins for other items, then it's a form of currency.
"Money" (Actually, "currency") is only as good as confidence in it, no matter what's backing it. The Roman Empire lasted about 18 months once confidence was lost in the currency (If noone will accept your coin then it has zero value - ironic as the reason it came to be rejected was a direct result of attempts to maintain confidence in the currency)
CableCos are very interested when ships anchor over their lines - mainly so they can bill the owners for repairs. Captains who ignore warning markers usually end up wit huge liabilities attached.
I thinkt his is the "more" https://greenhost.nl/2013/03/21/spam-not-spam-tracking-hijacked-spamhaus-ip/
Dickheads don't just lase passing aircraft. I got flashed while driving a few weeks ago and it _HURT_ - badly enough that I swerved involuntarily. This was very near a freeway interchange and I could easily see the idiots doing it off the overbridge "to see what happened".
imagine the damage a wireless ferret might cause...
Or what would have been deadly (or extremely disfiguring) injuries become mitigated down to neck injuries. My doctor pointed out that without a helmet I'd have no skull/face left, instead of a bunch of soft tissue damage from the twisting action as it hit the road. One of my teachers at high school wasn't wearing a helmet the day he kissed the road and what's left of his face is a sobering reminder of why they're a good idea. One can use the same argument to claim that car safety equpiment increases injury rates and decreases death rates.
Like "pixie dust"? A lot of this stuff does end up in available technology, but you don't hear about it because companies licensing it don't want to admit it's an IBM invention.
I watched the theatrical release as a kid, i can clearly remember thinking "episode IV? I've mssed the first 3!" Being (until my mid-30s) slightly obsessional about seeing movies and reading books in the order they were released....