Interesting point - maybe I shouldn't have said "loudly proclaiming" - for I certainly am not one to use a cellphone where it isn't wanted, and I am usually not "loud and obnoxious" (ok, sometimes I get a bit boistrous, but in general I am a quiet kind of person).
Maybe what I should have said was just for people around them to tell them to control themselves (or their kids, etc) - a public rebuke, but not necessarily one that causes as much disruption as the original issue...?
Good point, but I think part of the problem should also be placed on the shoulders of our society, as well.
Why are people so rude? What do you see people do when others are rude? I know when I have been in a theater, and a cellphone rings - everyone just ignores it, maybe a few groans are ellicited - but no one does anything. I don't know exactly where or when this sort of behavior among groups of people in public started up (I have a sneaking suspiscion that loud and obnoxious children being ignored by their parents may have something to do with it), but instead of those around the annoying stranger publically telling them to "get off the damn phone, moron!" - they are "pussyfied", and would rather sit and stew about it, looking the other way.
Do we really want this issue to stop (and it isn't just this issue - same with loud people, loud kids, in general - unchecked, obnoxious, and sometimes dangerous - behavior)? If so, we as a society need to quit being subserviant, docile sheep and instead loudly proclaim our displeasure (in public) over the acts we witness. If enough people did this, over time people would realize that society frowns upon this behavior, and would not engage in it.
After all, you don't see people running around willy-nilly punching people in the nose, do you (well, most of the time)...?
Here is one link to a company promoting this tech - I know there are others out there discussing this technology.
The tech consists of a reader and an RFID chip cured into the rubber of the tire. They say it is for tracking tires and life-use reasons, etc. But who is to say what you propose couldn't happen? All it would take would be a similar reader sensor connected up to a lovely ODB-III (read up on that if you want more lovely car news) system - and there you go: computer reads the tire, won't let you start the car after you turn it off (ie, the tire is read as it turns, sensor in wheel well, but unless they are real a$$hats they will wait until the car is shut off before giving you the message - heh, probably after getting the car home from having the tires replaced)...
I know others have posted about car companies teaming with fuel companies to sell gas for a car (free gas, supposedly), using odometer readings, and a special card. But think about this:
What if a sensor could be made that could "read" the gas in the tank (or as it flows through the gas line) and it reads a marker in the gas (pehaps encoded in the fuel chemical chains or something - kinda like a DNA encoding), and unless it is a certain gas, refuses to start the car (locks out pump, electrical, etc in the car)? Sure, you and I would take the sensor and put it in a sealed container of the special fuel, but most people wouldn't know how to do that, or wouldn't want to try - so what about them? Instant "closed" car fuel system, with the auto manufacturer getting kickbacks or something from the fuel companies (well, almost)...
What the science is behind these patches, and why (at least the nicotine ones - are others the same way?) they smell like cat p!ss (I know there has to be some ammonia component)?
I also wonder why (you would think it would be a nice logical progression) there haven't turned up any common (or new) illegal drug patches (ie, a cocaine, amphetimine, or THC patch - or an LSD patch)? Heck, why not any common drug patches (pain relief patch - not heat, but real pain blocking chems, or cold relief - though these probably don't matter because taking pills in our society is seen as "normal" - so why not illegal drugs in pill form - sort like LSD sugar cubes)?
Every since transdermal nicotine patches came out, I have kept thinking that some illegal drug entreprenour would come out with such a patch - but nothing, so far. So why not? Does something in the makeup of the patch prevent it (ie, chemical incompatibilities or something similar)? I doubt it is fear of patent infringements...
You should look into fictional, tech-style writing. You have an excellent way with prose, and your short writing was a bit haunting, mixed in with hope - I loved it. Just something to consider - you have the knack.
Ok - understandable. The main problem with solar cells/panels is that considerable fossil fuels and energy are spent in the design/manufacture/transport/installation. I don't know what the figures are (and I am not sure if they have even been computed, actually) - but I would be willing to bet that a solar cell (never mind a panel), providing it lasted "forever" (ie, > 100 years) would take a long time to "break even" energy-wise. In the extreme long-run (200+ years? More?), provided they didn't break down (and I have my doubts on that - the electrical interconnects on the cell surface would probably corrode in that amount of time rendering the cell useless), solar cells could conceivably be worthwhile. I honestly don't know what the true net-effects would be, I just have some doubts about solar cells as they currently exist (with that said, there are some very interesting solar cell technologies out there that seem promising, that don't rely on silicon or gallium arsenide, and seem to promise better efficiencies - one of my favorites, though currently inefficient, acts in a similar manner to chlorophyll, extracting energy in a chemical manner)...
You don't think you would use $10K of electricity over 15 years? You aren't thinking...
Say you pay the electric co. $100.00 a month (ha!!!) for electricity - each year you pay $1200.00 - 10 years later, $12,000.00.
Now, buy a house - 30 year mortgage, so - $36,000 in electricity.
Of course, considering you are liable to use 2-3x that in a house (depending on appliances, if you have a pool, etc) - you can see that such a system would pay for itself over the time you owned your house.
Of course, this doesn't take into account the question over whether the energy gained from the solar panels would be greater than the energy used to design/build/transport/install, nor does it take into account whether the amount you could put onto a house would be enough to satisfy your energy needs (maybe, maybe not) - but the point is, you definitely DO pay a lot of money for electricity from the power co. over time...
The segway tries to move underneath you, but it can't, because the wheels are stopped. Now, suppose the wheels are firmly locked (ignore the fact that this isn't very likely). The motors are trying to turn the wheels "forward", but can't - so the torque is applied instead to the motor housing, and thus rotates the platform "backwards".
Providing the motors are strong enough, the mountings and case mounts are solid, the motors should just rotate the rider to an upright position. If anything (but the sensors would stop it, unless they fail as well), the rider would be bashed or flung off backward. The Segway is really a form of servo-like feedback device, always trying to gain it's equalibrium - I wouldn't be a bit surprised if very little current is used to keep a rider balanced, and only when moving do the motors really use power...
AC, you probably won't read this, but the guy who developed/invented the Segway did create such a wheelchair-like device, which could roll around at normal wheelchair height, but "push a button", and it could stand up to normal height, balancing on two wheels (it had six total wheels, and could climb stairs as well). I don't remember the name of the device, and I don't think they are widely sold, but it led to the development of the Segway.
You should be modded up - you are correct, and I too wonder why nobody can seem to understand how to organize files hierarchically - yet they seem to be able to use a file cabinet (although, sometimes I wonder there, as well, given the number of file cabinets I have opened and nearly screamed at in horror).
With that said, I do have one caveat about hierarchical systems, that aren't typically addressed by such systems - the problem when you need to have a copy of the same thing reside in two (or more) areas.
I typically run into this with bookmarked links - say I have a bookmark for "3D Computer Graphics Programming" - well, it would be nice if it could referenced in multiple areas (each of those words could be a topic, for instance), without needing a copy in each area.
*nix tends to solve this (in the "standard" hierarchical filesystems typically used) through symbolic linking, which isn't a bad thing, but maintenance can be high (of course, *nix and shell scripting can come to the rescue here). Also, sometimes it would be nice if I could just search on some "keywords" and find the links/files I need based on a description (many times I find myself googling and bookmarking a link I already have - it would be nice to google and get the links I already have in my bookmarks first, then the links from an external search engine - I want to keep my links instead of only using google, because sometimes the link "goes away", but there is enough info in it and the URL to track down the site again, if it has moved or whatnot)...
Metadata filesystems try to bridge these areas, but they suffer from the issue of the user needing to enter in data about the file (especially if it is a sound file - ie, MP3 ID tags - or image file, like a jpeg - and IIRC, there are tags for jpegs as well - but are hardly ever filled in) as they save it.
Perhaps what is needed is more of a combo - keep storing stuff in a hierarchical filesystem, plus store a pointer to that file in a searchable database, populating the fields with the metadata from the file itself (if it has such fields, like jpegs, MP3s, etc - if not, ask for some generic data to be filled in). Finally, you would need some front-end "search" tools for the metadata representations, as well as some maintenance tools or something to keep the links/pointers in the DB up-to-date with the location of the file.
Something tells me that a simple version of such a system could be whipped up with a few Perl scripts, MySQL, and a cron job (maintenance)...
I once took apart an old (early 1970s) desk calculator (to this day I wish I hadn't), which used discrete transistor logic for the ALU and nixie tubes for the display (woot!). As I was taking it apart, there was one strange item that I didn't recognise (from my then limited electronics knowlege) - a silver box, about 3 inches on a side, and about an inch tall, with four wire coming out of it.
Being the idiot that I was, I wanted to know what was inside the box (it was sealed. A hammer, a screwdriver and some plier opened it up - and inside was a coiled wire (about three turns), and was connected at each end to what (I later learned) were piezo transducers.
This coil of wire in the box (not sure if the box was sealed for dust protection, or if there was a slight vacuum or something) acted as the "memory" function for the calculator, using a serial style pulse train over the wire to store the numbers.
Yeah, I got to find out how it worked, but I will never forgive myself for taking it apart...
In the past I have given thought to a variant of this - and it could work, given the size of many recent themepark and "portable" fairground rides:
Instead of a "40 foot" arm, build one with a VERY LARGE arm, with the same degrees-of-freedom (or more). I am thinking something like a 150-200 foot long arm (like a huge, multi-jointed, articulated crane arm).
Such a monster of a machine could be easily built with today's technology (look at coal strip mining machines, for example), would take up less space than a conventional coaster, but most important of all, it could easily simulate forward motion (especially if it was a hybrid cartesian/polar/revolute axis type arm, where the base could move laterally in two perpendicular directions, but the arm could still move in a polar or revolute fashion - anybody who works with robot arms knows what I mean here). The size of the machine would make the riders feel they were riding on a virtual track.
While what I was thinking would use way more space than this machine, it would be a great machine for a themepark...
How many times do I have to say this...?
on
DOD vs. 802.11b
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I have read many of the comments made on this topice here in this forum. I understand that there seems to be a confusion as to whether this issue is related to 802.11a or 802.11b. Frankly, I don't think it matters.
The fact is, 802.11x communication systems ARE REGULATED BY THE FCC. If they chose (or were ordered), they could easily deem the spectrum used by 802.11x to be off-limits to anyone! Sure, I have heard the comments like "but businesses have invested millions in 802.11 - they would howl" - perhaps they might. Or perhaps a transition would occur to make the larger companies happy, by providing some form of wireless that isn't available to the average consumer like 802.11x is - but still gives those communications companies a foothold in wireless comms, while making consumers happy, and also possibly providing an easy place for the feds to tap, while making community nets a thing of the past (think it impossible? Try to buy, as a consumer, your own TXRX system for a cell phone - good luck, if you can even afford it). Everyone (mostly) wins - except for the citizen, ne - consumer...
I have said many times that the government has this (unelected, unrepresented) power via the FCC to do this (think I am joking? Do a search on my past comments, if you don't believe me). In these same comments, I have presented a solution that very few have worked on (at least on the homebrew front), that could keep community networks alive, a solution the government (FCC) cannot regulate (but oh how they would try - and if they succeeded, well - then that is the cue for true revolution):
Laser/LEDComm
I daresay RONJA is probably the most advanced "homebrew" system out there (if anyone has links to more advanced stuff - such as on the order of homebrew sighting/retargeting systems like AirFiber's System - please post links!). Other links of interest:
So - these systems have problems (line of sight being the largest) - but all systems have problems. At least one company (AirFiber) is using similar tech to run a business for WAN layouts - so it should be possible for a homebrew solution to be worked out. Are we going to simply wait until 802.11x really gets "outlawed" before we do something? What kind of shit is that?
Oh - wait - this is/. - where apathy seems to almost be the rule when it comes to politics...
Not bad - but I still think if you were going to give a cooking geek a stove as a gift, the best stove to give would be a reconditioned O'Keefe Merritt - preferably one (such as this lovely cobalt blue stove) with a Grillevator (tm).
To be honest, I have seriously considered getting gas run to my house just to be able to purchase one of these (I am not really a cooking geek, either, though I aspire to be one - but my wife is. I just want one because they look nice, solid, and reliable - they look like they would be both fun to cook on, and beautiful to look at)...
This is interesting - maybe you know something or can point me to a link.
I know that Ford has a stake in Mazda - but I wondered how it worked. I own a 1994 Ford Ranger. Now, when I bought the truck, Mazda small pickup trucks looked different, but yet still similar enough to Ford Rangers that you could easily confuse the two (the main tipoff was the third brakelight). Later, Ford introduced the Ranger Splash and other "curvy" Rangers (and trucks across thier whole line - personally I think it makes them look stupid, but that is my opinion) - the Mazdas remained the same. However, in the past couple of years or so, Mazda pickups seem identical to 1994-1995 Ford Rangers - I mean, if you sat my truck next to a 2001-2002 Mazda Pickup, you would swear they were the same vehicle. I am sure there are differences (perhaps mainly under-hood, and elsewhere), but they seem similar enough that you could swap-parts, etc.
I just want to know if Mazda and Ford is more closely related than I think - or do they swap designs, etc - plus, whether I could "upgrade" parts in my current truck with "new" Mazda parts, etc (and before you bash the Ranger - yeah, I have heard horror stories, but - my Ranger has 114k miles on it, and is still running great)...
Fun stuff to look into - I seem to remember not too long ago a/. article on a MAV constructed in which they posted a white paper (in PDF format, IIRC) on the device - it was pretty small, several centimeter wingspan, used a pager motor for propulsion and custom micro-servos for control, and had an onboard wireless video camera. I remember that supposedly it could stay aloft for up to 30 minutes of flight time, and was made from dense styrofoam. The white paper was detailed enough that someone (aka - r/c flight hobbiest) could easily build such a thing from the description and pictures given.
I suggest that if you are interested in building such a thing, look into using parts from micro-RC race cars. Some people are already experimenting - I read about one guy in Japan who tried to build a micro plane from his micro-car parts by attaching them to a small balsa glider (it didn't work very well - but it was a start)...
Re:It does matter - people will care...
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Tornado in a Can
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· Score: 3, Interesting
It has been speculated (not sure, maybe even confirmed) that prion-related diseases occur due to the continued feeding on closely interelated species. Thus, Mad Cow Disease (affecting the bovine population) came from meal made from scrapie infected sheep (both animals are related species-wise - I would imagine had the meal been fed to horses or zebras, a similar outcome would occur).
Kuru (named after a people in New Guinea?), aka CJD (I think) came from the natives ritual of "eating the dead" - a relative would die, the family would "eat" the relative, then those members would get the disease, die from it, then others would eat them, and so on.
What I find odd about the whole thing, is why this has only recently (relatively) cropped up. In the case of Mad Cow, one can almost say "Well, it is only happenning now because we didn't feed animals to herbivores, or within the same species" - but that only makes limited sense:
You do have a point, rodgerd - chickens will (at minimum) kill other chickens, and peck at them, eating the kill to a certain extent (my parents raised chickens, I remember this happening since you mentioned it) - I am certain it is more common in the wild. Furthermore, human culture has practiced canabilism in the past, and the Kuru tribe certainly practiced their ritual prior to the discovery of in in the 1950's - so why is it only "now" (ie, since the 1950's) that prion-related diseases have come forth? If this was an issue that has occurred often in the past, why didn't the Kuru people get wiped out long before? They never thought that the dead relatives were bad for them to eat - they thought they died from being possessed by demons (or something to that effect from what I have read) - so why didn't the cycle continue until the very end, a long time ago?
The only answer I can come up with is that prions have somehow either been woken up, or have been introduced in some manner into human culture - most likely accidentally from some form of processing (I wouldn't doubt meat processing, but it could be something else). Anybody have other reasonings?
The scary thing is that it won't even matter if you go vegetarian or vegan - it has been postulated that prions exist nearly everywhere, and quite possibly that animals (including us) are born with them - and that something triggers them to make them into the crazy, murderous, pseudo-DNA/RNA that they are...
Frightening...
It does matter - people will care...
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Tornado in a Can
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· Score: 3, Insightful
...as soon as massive numbers of humans begin to die from prion-related diseases (CJD, Mad Cow, Scrapie, etc).
I just hope the dried meal they make from chicken parts isn't fed to other chickens (and hopefully they aren't doing the same with cows on the beef meal made - surely we learned that lesson - then again, look at everything else)...
Think about it - back in the old episodes, Mel Gibson was still talking twangy aussie-like (not sure what to call it, so don't flame me) - since then, he has managed to "Americanize" himself away from the "Aussie Mad Max" image (voice coaching? I dunno). I have to say I like the works he has done recently (Ransom and What Women Want being two of the better "normal length" recent movies, IMHO) - but there isn't much of a trace of "Mad Max" in either.
I hope what they do with the movie is advance the time a few decades, cast Mel as an older, wiser Max - then get the dude who played the "Ferral Kid" to be the main risk taker, under the watchful eye of Max - it would make sense, timewise - and I think the guy could pull it off...
If Quicken does the matching and flagging, then there is nothing wrong - Quicken will flag it, and you can check from there.
My comment wasn't about Quicken (it is nice to know that Quicken will handle the situation of double entries), but of only downloading the transactions, and not hand entering them. I can see in your case of entering the transactions, then downloading them to compare and balance - but if you are only downloading them (or only looking at an online version), and not doing your own recording - that is where the problem lies.
I think a lot of people probably do this, to avoid having to sit down and enter transactions - assumming and trusting the bank to always be correct. Maybe the bank is flawless (though I highly doubt it), but the merchants aren't.
It sounds like you are using the Quicken import as a "double check" as well as for balancing - this is fine - it is when you rely only upon the entries in that download (and not on what you enter) that the problem occurs...
Don't the walls in old homes (ie, balloon frame construction) have no intervening "firewall" horizontals (unless added during a renovation)? If that is the case, then the only "problem" areas would be the baseboard/ceiling joists to drill through - other than that you should be able to drop cable straight down the walls (hanging a weight off the end to help). If not, I am certain there are other ways to wire it - older houses tend to filled with funky nooks and crannies stuff can be hidden behind/in (maybe an old knob/post electrical run? Also, some old houses hid electrical wires behind baseboard/door molding "conduits" - check those).
I am also not so sure copper is more expensive - unless you are one of those "my time is money" kinda guys (in which event I wonder if you lose sleep over sleeping) - I can see the expense of buying cable - but don't buy new, buy surplus (I recently managed to snag a 1/3 spool of fiber for $10.00 - spools of CAT5E were going for $5.00-10.00 for an almost whole box/spool - approx 8-900 feet). End connectors are cheap, so is the crimp tool (might as well get one as you will need it for other smaller cables later).
Your only real expense is the time spent planning and installing. I suppose that time could be used in other ways (and hey, in a 100 year old house, there are several more important, and fun, things to worry about than a network).
This is slightly off-topic, so I am going to self-mod this post down to "1" in fairness (mods, please don't mod down further)...
Anyhow, what I am wanting to impress upon readers are the issues that I hate about online banking as well as import of files from a bank - to save time from hand entering transactions.
On the surface, the idea that you could import these transactions, or call them all up in a web browser, sounds good at first glance. Saves you the typing, no need for writing down the transactions, etc, right? But that is where the problem lies.
When you write down your transactions, or hand enter them (from receipts) - at the end of the month when you balance your account your version had better match up with the bank's version - if it doesn't then there is a problem, and the job is to figure out if it is on thier end, or your end.
Say you go to a restaurant and order dinner, and pay for it with your debit card. You enter the transaction at home that night. A month later you receive your bank statement, and during your account balancing session you notice that on the same night are two transactions for the same amount at that restaurant - but you know you only had dinner once, based on your accounting entry (this is not really a made up story - I have had it happen to me several times, at different restaurants).
Had you been importing the account transactions, or been looking at the "web-statement" online, you might very well miss the problem (there is a way around this, kinda a "reverse-balancing" system - whereby you compare the statement to your collection of receipts, to see if all the receipts are accounted for and only used once - but this system has flaws, mainly due to needing to read each line, possibly skipping lines, and other issues) - but you would never know you lost some money...
It really is bad accounting practice - I doubt banks and businesses would use such a system - so why should individuals? I tend to think this issue isn't brought up much because these mistakes, since they aren't as easily caught by individuals, actually cause more money to be earned by the banks and businesses (especially if the businesses and customers bank at the same bank - the money never leaves the bank, so bank doesn't care, and the business has made double money off of one transaction - why should they care?).
Good accounting practices are to keep a separate ledger of your own, and don't keep two separate running copies of the ledger (to avoid double entry errors). Then, at the end of the month compare your ledger to the bank's.
This is one thing I like about the older CheckFree software (and the only thing keeping me on Windows) - you had basically a check ledger for each of your accounts, and you could enter in transactions - at the end of the month you enter starting and ending amounts, and check off each transaction as you see it on your statement. If you have the same number of transactions with the same amounts, the total at the end comes out to be $0.00 - indicating the account it balanced with no descrepancies. It has save me many times.
I tried to go with on-line service with BofA (where I bank), but it doesn't offer that kind of feature, nor does it have the option to pay online to merchants who don't take EFT payments through them (whereas CheckFree will cut a paper check and mail it). I have yet to find a solution under Linux that will work for me (GNUcash would be it if it had EFT support, but without it I would need to use some other electronic payment system, and also do double entry, which breaks one of the main good accounting practices). If anyone knows of one, let me know (I have considered running the CheckFree software under Wine, as well)...
Relating to 3D, but on a television - back in the 80's (when I was a kid) I watched an episode of "That's Incredible" about these two individuals who had created a new 3D system for television broadcasting. Basically, it was a "black box" type device that hooked up in the video signal stream, and modified it in such a way so as to appear 3D to the viewer, without glasses.
That's Incredible showed some footage - and incredibly it had "depth" - it showed footage of people throwing a frisbee (to a dog?), and some other things - the TV seemed to gain "depth" (in other words, things didn't "pop-out", but rather it looked like there was depth into the TV). Even more amazing, you could close one eye - and you could STILL see the effect. You could even videotape it, and replay the tape - and view it - I had a tape of the show at one time, but eventually it was lost (I think my dad taped over it).
Anyhow, since then, I have not seen anything on how it was done, nor can I remember who did it, etc - I do remember that the video seemed to be shaking up and down - so I don't know if there was some funkiness going on with interleaving frames (fields) in the NTSC signal to achieve the effect or what...
Has anyone here seen this, or know what I am talking about? It was a very interesting system...
Sure, it has some nice engineering, and it utilises a cool looking frame, and has some interesting software - but really, you could easily build one of these things cheaper from parts you could pick up at a Home Depot.
Some angle alumininum (or steel), a couple of cordless drills (for drive motors), a couple of plastic casters, some plastic lawnmower wheels, and a few bolts - four DPDT relays from Radio Shack (or your favorite surplus supplier), a few transistors, some resistors, and diode (for coil flyback protection) - maybe a hex driver IC or whatnot - an old 386 or 486 laptop with parallel port, and a simple parallel port interface box (stuff the relays and whatnot inside) - that is all you need. If you shop judiciously, you could probably scam the whole thing together for under $200.00. Shop surplus, scrap, and junk parts - you could easily get it for under $100.00, or less.
Need a camera? Drop a micro-ITX motherboard on the thing, and add a cheap USB camera.
If you wanted to have the super-cool modular metal beams, those can be readily found online through metal suppliers (though they are pretty costly per foot) - but really, standard extruded aluminium pieces from Home Depot or a scrap metal yard will work just fine. There are plenty of resources on the internet on hooking up a PC to the motors (whether the motors are simple DC motors, or steppers like this device uses - and surplus stepper motors are everywhere - hell, pull them from an old printer), adding sensors of every sort, programming, etc. No need at all to spend $600.00, unless you just like throwing money at problems...
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe what I should have said was just for people around them to tell them to control themselves (or their kids, etc) - a public rebuke, but not necessarily one that causes as much disruption as the original issue...?
Good point, but I think part of the problem should also be placed on the shoulders of our society, as well.
Why are people so rude? What do you see people do when others are rude? I know when I have been in a theater, and a cellphone rings - everyone just ignores it, maybe a few groans are ellicited - but no one does anything. I don't know exactly where or when this sort of behavior among groups of people in public started up (I have a sneaking suspiscion that loud and obnoxious children being ignored by their parents may have something to do with it), but instead of those around the annoying stranger publically telling them to "get off the damn phone, moron!" - they are "pussyfied", and would rather sit and stew about it, looking the other way.
Do we really want this issue to stop (and it isn't just this issue - same with loud people, loud kids, in general - unchecked, obnoxious, and sometimes dangerous - behavior)? If so, we as a society need to quit being subserviant, docile sheep and instead loudly proclaim our displeasure (in public) over the acts we witness. If enough people did this, over time people would realize that society frowns upon this behavior, and would not engage in it.
After all, you don't see people running around willy-nilly punching people in the nose, do you (well, most of the time)...?
The tech consists of a reader and an RFID chip cured into the rubber of the tire. They say it is for tracking tires and life-use reasons, etc. But who is to say what you propose couldn't happen? All it would take would be a similar reader sensor connected up to a lovely ODB-III (read up on that if you want more lovely car news) system - and there you go: computer reads the tire, won't let you start the car after you turn it off (ie, the tire is read as it turns, sensor in wheel well, but unless they are real a$$hats they will wait until the car is shut off before giving you the message - heh, probably after getting the car home from having the tires replaced)...
I know others have posted about car companies teaming with fuel companies to sell gas for a car (free gas, supposedly), using odometer readings, and a special card. But think about this:
What if a sensor could be made that could "read" the gas in the tank (or as it flows through the gas line) and it reads a marker in the gas (pehaps encoded in the fuel chemical chains or something - kinda like a DNA encoding), and unless it is a certain gas, refuses to start the car (locks out pump, electrical, etc in the car)? Sure, you and I would take the sensor and put it in a sealed container of the special fuel, but most people wouldn't know how to do that, or wouldn't want to try - so what about them? Instant "closed" car fuel system, with the auto manufacturer getting kickbacks or something from the fuel companies (well, almost)...
I also wonder why (you would think it would be a nice logical progression) there haven't turned up any common (or new) illegal drug patches (ie, a cocaine, amphetimine, or THC patch - or an LSD patch)? Heck, why not any common drug patches (pain relief patch - not heat, but real pain blocking chems, or cold relief - though these probably don't matter because taking pills in our society is seen as "normal" - so why not illegal drugs in pill form - sort like LSD sugar cubes)?
Every since transdermal nicotine patches came out, I have kept thinking that some illegal drug entreprenour would come out with such a patch - but nothing, so far. So why not? Does something in the makeup of the patch prevent it (ie, chemical incompatibilities or something similar)? I doubt it is fear of patent infringements...
You should look into fictional, tech-style writing. You have an excellent way with prose, and your short writing was a bit haunting, mixed in with hope - I loved it. Just something to consider - you have the knack.
Ok - understandable. The main problem with solar cells/panels is that considerable fossil fuels and energy are spent in the design/manufacture/transport /installation. I don't know what the figures are (and I am not sure if they have even been computed, actually) - but I would be willing to bet that a solar cell (never mind a panel), providing it lasted "forever" (ie, > 100 years) would take a long time to "break even" energy-wise. In the extreme long-run (200+ years? More?), provided they didn't break down (and I have my doubts on that - the electrical interconnects on the cell surface would probably corrode in that amount of time rendering the cell useless), solar cells could conceivably be worthwhile. I honestly don't know what the true net-effects would be, I just have some doubts about solar cells as they currently exist (with that said, there are some very interesting solar cell technologies out there that seem promising, that don't rely on silicon or gallium arsenide, and seem to promise better efficiencies - one of my favorites, though currently inefficient, acts in a similar manner to chlorophyll, extracting energy in a chemical manner)...
Say you pay the electric co. $100.00 a month (ha!!!) for electricity - each year you pay $1200.00 - 10 years later, $12,000.00.
Now, buy a house - 30 year mortgage, so - $36,000 in electricity.
Of course, considering you are liable to use 2-3x that in a house (depending on appliances, if you have a pool, etc) - you can see that such a system would pay for itself over the time you owned your house.
Of course, this doesn't take into account the question over whether the energy gained from the solar panels would be greater than the energy used to design/build/transport/install, nor does it take into account whether the amount you could put onto a house would be enough to satisfy your energy needs (maybe, maybe not) - but the point is, you definitely DO pay a lot of money for electricity from the power co. over time...
Providing the motors are strong enough, the mountings and case mounts are solid, the motors should just rotate the rider to an upright position. If anything (but the sensors would stop it, unless they fail as well), the rider would be bashed or flung off backward. The Segway is really a form of servo-like feedback device, always trying to gain it's equalibrium - I wouldn't be a bit surprised if very little current is used to keep a rider balanced, and only when moving do the motors really use power...
AC, you probably won't read this, but the guy who developed/invented the Segway did create such a wheelchair-like device, which could roll around at normal wheelchair height, but "push a button", and it could stand up to normal height, balancing on two wheels (it had six total wheels, and could climb stairs as well). I don't remember the name of the device, and I don't think they are widely sold, but it led to the development of the Segway.
Don't know if it has been said or not, but a tour of a printing plant (ie, large newspaper or magazine publisher) can be very interesting...
With that said, I do have one caveat about hierarchical systems, that aren't typically addressed by such systems - the problem when you need to have a copy of the same thing reside in two (or more) areas.
I typically run into this with bookmarked links - say I have a bookmark for "3D Computer Graphics Programming" - well, it would be nice if it could referenced in multiple areas (each of those words could be a topic, for instance), without needing a copy in each area.
*nix tends to solve this (in the "standard" hierarchical filesystems typically used) through symbolic linking, which isn't a bad thing, but maintenance can be high (of course, *nix and shell scripting can come to the rescue here). Also, sometimes it would be nice if I could just search on some "keywords" and find the links/files I need based on a description (many times I find myself googling and bookmarking a link I already have - it would be nice to google and get the links I already have in my bookmarks first, then the links from an external search engine - I want to keep my links instead of only using google, because sometimes the link "goes away", but there is enough info in it and the URL to track down the site again, if it has moved or whatnot)...
Metadata filesystems try to bridge these areas, but they suffer from the issue of the user needing to enter in data about the file (especially if it is a sound file - ie, MP3 ID tags - or image file, like a jpeg - and IIRC, there are tags for jpegs as well - but are hardly ever filled in) as they save it.
Perhaps what is needed is more of a combo - keep storing stuff in a hierarchical filesystem, plus store a pointer to that file in a searchable database, populating the fields with the metadata from the file itself (if it has such fields, like jpegs, MP3s, etc - if not, ask for some generic data to be filled in). Finally, you would need some front-end "search" tools for the metadata representations, as well as some maintenance tools or something to keep the links/pointers in the DB up-to-date with the location of the file.
Something tells me that a simple version of such a system could be whipped up with a few Perl scripts, MySQL, and a cron job (maintenance)...
Look into "nickel wire" delay line "memory"...
I once took apart an old (early 1970s) desk calculator (to this day I wish I hadn't), which used discrete transistor logic for the ALU and nixie tubes for the display (woot!). As I was taking it apart, there was one strange item that I didn't recognise (from my then limited electronics knowlege) - a silver box, about 3 inches on a side, and about an inch tall, with four wire coming out of it.
Being the idiot that I was, I wanted to know what was inside the box (it was sealed. A hammer, a screwdriver and some plier opened it up - and inside was a coiled wire (about three turns), and was connected at each end to what (I later learned) were piezo transducers.
This coil of wire in the box (not sure if the box was sealed for dust protection, or if there was a slight vacuum or something) acted as the "memory" function for the calculator, using a serial style pulse train over the wire to store the numbers.
Yeah, I got to find out how it worked, but I will never forgive myself for taking it apart...
Instead of a "40 foot" arm, build one with a VERY LARGE arm, with the same degrees-of-freedom (or more). I am thinking something like a 150-200 foot long arm (like a huge, multi-jointed, articulated crane arm).
Such a monster of a machine could be easily built with today's technology (look at coal strip mining machines, for example), would take up less space than a conventional coaster, but most important of all, it could easily simulate forward motion (especially if it was a hybrid cartesian/polar/revolute axis type arm, where the base could move laterally in two perpendicular directions, but the arm could still move in a polar or revolute fashion - anybody who works with robot arms knows what I mean here). The size of the machine would make the riders feel they were riding on a virtual track.
While what I was thinking would use way more space than this machine, it would be a great machine for a themepark...
The fact is, 802.11x communication systems ARE REGULATED BY THE FCC. If they chose (or were ordered), they could easily deem the spectrum used by 802.11x to be off-limits to anyone! Sure, I have heard the comments like "but businesses have invested millions in 802.11 - they would howl" - perhaps they might. Or perhaps a transition would occur to make the larger companies happy, by providing some form of wireless that isn't available to the average consumer like 802.11x is - but still gives those communications companies a foothold in wireless comms, while making consumers happy, and also possibly providing an easy place for the feds to tap, while making community nets a thing of the past (think it impossible? Try to buy, as a consumer, your own TXRX system for a cell phone - good luck, if you can even afford it). Everyone (mostly) wins - except for the citizen, ne - consumer...
I have said many times that the government has this (unelected, unrepresented) power via the FCC to do this (think I am joking? Do a search on my past comments, if you don't believe me). In these same comments, I have presented a solution that very few have worked on (at least on the homebrew front), that could keep community networks alive, a solution the government (FCC) cannot regulate (but oh how they would try - and if they succeeded, well - then that is the cue for true revolution):
Laser/LEDComm
I daresay RONJA is probably the most advanced "homebrew" system out there (if anyone has links to more advanced stuff - such as on the order of homebrew sighting/retargeting systems like AirFiber's System - please post links!). Other links of interest:
http://www.alphalink.com.au/~derekw/upn tcvr.htm
http://www.hut.fi/Misc/Electronics/circu its/laserlink.html
http://www.geocities.com/Silic onValley/Lakes/7156/laser.htm
http://www.n1bug.ne t/tech/laser/laserfr.html
http://www.n1bug.net/te ch/laser/alc_wa6ejo.html
http://www.repairfaq.org /sam/lasersam.htm
http://www.qsl.net/w1vlf/techin fo/optical_transmitters.html
http://misty.com/peo ple/don/laserdon.html
So - these systems have problems (line of sight being the largest) - but all systems have problems. At least one company (AirFiber) is using similar tech to run a business for WAN layouts - so it should be possible for a homebrew solution to be worked out. Are we going to simply wait until 802.11x really gets "outlawed" before we do something? What kind of shit is that?
Oh - wait - this is /. - where apathy seems to almost be the rule when it comes to politics...
To be honest, I have seriously considered getting gas run to my house just to be able to purchase one of these (I am not really a cooking geek, either, though I aspire to be one - but my wife is. I just want one because they look nice, solid, and reliable - they look like they would be both fun to cook on, and beautiful to look at)...
I know that Ford has a stake in Mazda - but I wondered how it worked. I own a 1994 Ford Ranger. Now, when I bought the truck, Mazda small pickup trucks looked different, but yet still similar enough to Ford Rangers that you could easily confuse the two (the main tipoff was the third brakelight). Later, Ford introduced the Ranger Splash and other "curvy" Rangers (and trucks across thier whole line - personally I think it makes them look stupid, but that is my opinion) - the Mazdas remained the same. However, in the past couple of years or so, Mazda pickups seem identical to 1994-1995 Ford Rangers - I mean, if you sat my truck next to a 2001-2002 Mazda Pickup, you would swear they were the same vehicle. I am sure there are differences (perhaps mainly under-hood, and elsewhere), but they seem similar enough that you could swap-parts, etc.
I just want to know if Mazda and Ford is more closely related than I think - or do they swap designs, etc - plus, whether I could "upgrade" parts in my current truck with "new" Mazda parts, etc (and before you bash the Ranger - yeah, I have heard horror stories, but - my Ranger has 114k miles on it, and is still running great)...
Fun stuff to look into - I seem to remember not too long ago a /. article on a MAV constructed in which they posted a white paper (in PDF format, IIRC) on the device - it was pretty small, several centimeter wingspan, used a pager motor for propulsion and custom micro-servos for control, and had an onboard wireless video camera. I remember that supposedly it could stay aloft for up to 30 minutes of flight time, and was made from dense styrofoam. The white paper was detailed enough that someone (aka - r/c flight hobbiest) could easily build such a thing from the description and pictures given.
I suggest that if you are interested in building such a thing, look into using parts from micro-RC race cars. Some people are already experimenting - I read about one guy in Japan who tried to build a micro plane from his micro-car parts by attaching them to a small balsa glider (it didn't work very well - but it was a start)...
Kuru (named after a people in New Guinea?), aka CJD (I think) came from the natives ritual of "eating the dead" - a relative would die, the family would "eat" the relative, then those members would get the disease, die from it, then others would eat them, and so on.
What I find odd about the whole thing, is why this has only recently (relatively) cropped up. In the case of Mad Cow, one can almost say "Well, it is only happenning now because we didn't feed animals to herbivores, or within the same species" - but that only makes limited sense:
You do have a point, rodgerd - chickens will (at minimum) kill other chickens, and peck at them, eating the kill to a certain extent (my parents raised chickens, I remember this happening since you mentioned it) - I am certain it is more common in the wild. Furthermore, human culture has practiced canabilism in the past, and the Kuru tribe certainly practiced their ritual prior to the discovery of in in the 1950's - so why is it only "now" (ie, since the 1950's) that prion-related diseases have come forth? If this was an issue that has occurred often in the past, why didn't the Kuru people get wiped out long before? They never thought that the dead relatives were bad for them to eat - they thought they died from being possessed by demons (or something to that effect from what I have read) - so why didn't the cycle continue until the very end, a long time ago?
The only answer I can come up with is that prions have somehow either been woken up, or have been introduced in some manner into human culture - most likely accidentally from some form of processing (I wouldn't doubt meat processing, but it could be something else). Anybody have other reasonings?
The scary thing is that it won't even matter if you go vegetarian or vegan - it has been postulated that prions exist nearly everywhere, and quite possibly that animals (including us) are born with them - and that something triggers them to make them into the crazy, murderous, pseudo-DNA/RNA that they are...
Frightening...
I just hope the dried meal they make from chicken parts isn't fed to other chickens (and hopefully they aren't doing the same with cows on the beef meal made - surely we learned that lesson - then again, look at everything else)...
Think about it - back in the old episodes, Mel Gibson was still talking twangy aussie-like (not sure what to call it, so don't flame me) - since then, he has managed to "Americanize" himself away from the "Aussie Mad Max" image (voice coaching? I dunno). I have to say I like the works he has done recently (Ransom and What Women Want being two of the better "normal length" recent movies, IMHO) - but there isn't much of a trace of "Mad Max" in either.
I hope what they do with the movie is advance the time a few decades, cast Mel as an older, wiser Max - then get the dude who played the "Ferral Kid" to be the main risk taker, under the watchful eye of Max - it would make sense, timewise - and I think the guy could pull it off...
My comment wasn't about Quicken (it is nice to know that Quicken will handle the situation of double entries), but of only downloading the transactions, and not hand entering them. I can see in your case of entering the transactions, then downloading them to compare and balance - but if you are only downloading them (or only looking at an online version), and not doing your own recording - that is where the problem lies.
I think a lot of people probably do this, to avoid having to sit down and enter transactions - assumming and trusting the bank to always be correct. Maybe the bank is flawless (though I highly doubt it), but the merchants aren't.
It sounds like you are using the Quicken import as a "double check" as well as for balancing - this is fine - it is when you rely only upon the entries in that download (and not on what you enter) that the problem occurs...
I am also not so sure copper is more expensive - unless you are one of those "my time is money" kinda guys (in which event I wonder if you lose sleep over sleeping) - I can see the expense of buying cable - but don't buy new, buy surplus (I recently managed to snag a 1/3 spool of fiber for $10.00 - spools of CAT5E were going for $5.00-10.00 for an almost whole box/spool - approx 8-900 feet). End connectors are cheap, so is the crimp tool (might as well get one as you will need it for other smaller cables later).
Your only real expense is the time spent planning and installing. I suppose that time could be used in other ways (and hey, in a 100 year old house, there are several more important, and fun, things to worry about than a network).
Anyhow, what I am wanting to impress upon readers are the issues that I hate about online banking as well as import of files from a bank - to save time from hand entering transactions.
On the surface, the idea that you could import these transactions, or call them all up in a web browser, sounds good at first glance. Saves you the typing, no need for writing down the transactions, etc, right? But that is where the problem lies.
When you write down your transactions, or hand enter them (from receipts) - at the end of the month when you balance your account your version had better match up with the bank's version - if it doesn't then there is a problem, and the job is to figure out if it is on thier end, or your end.
Say you go to a restaurant and order dinner, and pay for it with your debit card. You enter the transaction at home that night. A month later you receive your bank statement, and during your account balancing session you notice that on the same night are two transactions for the same amount at that restaurant - but you know you only had dinner once, based on your accounting entry (this is not really a made up story - I have had it happen to me several times, at different restaurants).
Had you been importing the account transactions, or been looking at the "web-statement" online, you might very well miss the problem (there is a way around this, kinda a "reverse-balancing" system - whereby you compare the statement to your collection of receipts, to see if all the receipts are accounted for and only used once - but this system has flaws, mainly due to needing to read each line, possibly skipping lines, and other issues) - but you would never know you lost some money...
It really is bad accounting practice - I doubt banks and businesses would use such a system - so why should individuals? I tend to think this issue isn't brought up much because these mistakes, since they aren't as easily caught by individuals, actually cause more money to be earned by the banks and businesses (especially if the businesses and customers bank at the same bank - the money never leaves the bank, so bank doesn't care, and the business has made double money off of one transaction - why should they care?).
Good accounting practices are to keep a separate ledger of your own, and don't keep two separate running copies of the ledger (to avoid double entry errors). Then, at the end of the month compare your ledger to the bank's.
This is one thing I like about the older CheckFree software (and the only thing keeping me on Windows) - you had basically a check ledger for each of your accounts, and you could enter in transactions - at the end of the month you enter starting and ending amounts, and check off each transaction as you see it on your statement. If you have the same number of transactions with the same amounts, the total at the end comes out to be $0.00 - indicating the account it balanced with no descrepancies. It has save me many times.
I tried to go with on-line service with BofA (where I bank), but it doesn't offer that kind of feature, nor does it have the option to pay online to merchants who don't take EFT payments through them (whereas CheckFree will cut a paper check and mail it). I have yet to find a solution under Linux that will work for me (GNUcash would be it if it had EFT support, but without it I would need to use some other electronic payment system, and also do double entry, which breaks one of the main good accounting practices). If anyone knows of one, let me know (I have considered running the CheckFree software under Wine, as well)...
That's Incredible showed some footage - and incredibly it had "depth" - it showed footage of people throwing a frisbee (to a dog?), and some other things - the TV seemed to gain "depth" (in other words, things didn't "pop-out", but rather it looked like there was depth into the TV). Even more amazing, you could close one eye - and you could STILL see the effect. You could even videotape it, and replay the tape - and view it - I had a tape of the show at one time, but eventually it was lost (I think my dad taped over it).
Anyhow, since then, I have not seen anything on how it was done, nor can I remember who did it, etc - I do remember that the video seemed to be shaking up and down - so I don't know if there was some funkiness going on with interleaving frames (fields) in the NTSC signal to achieve the effect or what...
Has anyone here seen this, or know what I am talking about? It was a very interesting system...
Sure, it has some nice engineering, and it utilises a cool looking frame, and has some interesting software - but really, you could easily build one of these things cheaper from parts you could pick up at a Home Depot.
Some angle alumininum (or steel), a couple of cordless drills (for drive motors), a couple of plastic casters, some plastic lawnmower wheels, and a few bolts - four DPDT relays from Radio Shack (or your favorite surplus supplier), a few transistors, some resistors, and diode (for coil flyback protection) - maybe a hex driver IC or whatnot - an old 386 or 486 laptop with parallel port, and a simple parallel port interface box (stuff the relays and whatnot inside) - that is all you need. If you shop judiciously, you could probably scam the whole thing together for under $200.00. Shop surplus, scrap, and junk parts - you could easily get it for under $100.00, or less.
Need a camera? Drop a micro-ITX motherboard on the thing, and add a cheap USB camera.
If you wanted to have the super-cool modular metal beams, those can be readily found online through metal suppliers (though they are pretty costly per foot) - but really, standard extruded aluminium pieces from Home Depot or a scrap metal yard will work just fine. There are plenty of resources on the internet on hooking up a PC to the motors (whether the motors are simple DC motors, or steppers like this device uses - and surplus stepper motors are everywhere - hell, pull them from an old printer), adding sensors of every sort, programming, etc. No need at all to spend $600.00, unless you just like throwing money at problems...