Ehh...yeah...and I noticed he's got different brands of batteries and even chargeables, standard, and alkaline batteries all mixed together. That's quite a little cocktail of things that can go wrong. Once that dry cell nine volt dies and the alkaline hasn't yet, the circuit isn't so hot any more...or maybe it is hot, in a bad way.
Just get 10 NiMH AAA batteries and wire them in series. They're 1.2 volts, so you'll get 12 to start off. It'll end up being about 1.75"x1.875"x.75" if you don't use holders, otherwise you can use two 4-cell holders and one 2-cell holder in a small box, which would make it a lot easier to pull out the batteries for recharging. This gets you about 600 extra milliamps, I have no idea what the iPod drains. If you used AAs instead, that would get you up to 1800ma. But 10 AAs are a little heavier.
A 465 is good, but a 465B is better. The Tek 465 is about 30 years old now, and the 465B is only 20 years old. I was able to pick up a nice 465B with all manuals and accessories on eBay for $100 recently.
If the poster really wants a digital oscilloscope, head on over to fpga4fun.com. There's some neat little FPGA projects, based on a little FPGA board the guy designed and is now selling for $50. One of the applications is a digital sampling oscilloscope; it actually looks pretty neat. With the FPGA board and ADC board, it's pretty cheap too.
Ehhh...that's pretty flawed. The difference is that with capitalism we're selling a product on the open market, whereas in the virus example we're threatening to destroy a large segment of the population and holding everyone for ransom (especially the girlfriend of the guy who will eventually storm the Fortress of Doom and defeat the bad guy and his minions singlehandedly, and then blow it all up).
Darkest of night With the moon shining bright There's a set goin' strong Lotta things goin' on The virus of the hour Has an air of great power The dudes have envied it for so long
Oooh, Superflu You're gonna make your fortune by and by But if you lose, don't ask no questions why The only game you know is Do or Die (mostly Die)
There is nothing you can do to force a business to improve itself. They will only improve if they want to.
Once you're past the initial complaint, you're just burning up time. Staying on the phone for hours only teaches them that they don't have to resolve complaints in a timely manner, customers will wait forever to get their $20. Right now it's almost the norm to spend a long time waiting for support. Companies gauge how long customers will wait, and cut their staff accordingly. So, I place the blame for slow response on the people who are stupid enough to endure it.
No, my analysis is not flawed. I never said that I would just let it go, I said that there was a limit to the amount of time I would spend trying to get my money back.
If I have to spend too much time forcing a business to provide adequate quality service, I won't do business with them again. I tell them as much, and most of the time they fix the problem and I will do business with them again. Most businesses really aren't out there trying to provide bad service; it's usually human error and companies usually try to get the issue resolved in a minimum amount of time.
The pressure is applied to the business within the first minute of your complaint. They know that if they don't satisfactorily resolve your issue, you probably won't buy from them again, and you'll tell your friends not to either. Any time you spend after that first minute is just you trying to get your money back. Multiple calls and hours on the phone will not pressure a business to improve itself. If you have to spend that much time, the business has no intention of improving itself.
Don't stay on hold for 45 minutes to get a $5 rebate, with the idea that you're helping the business world into some enlightened age of customer service utopia. All you're doing is reinforcing the fact that they do not need to resolve complaints in a timely manner; customers will wait for them and take whatever abuse is required to get their five bucks.
My thoughts exactly. I typically look at the money I'll gain from pushing the issue, and then figure that the maximum amount of time I'll spend on it is no more than how long it would take me to earn that much at $40 an hour. The other week I called in about a $10 shipping overcharge on some parts I ordered, but I spent no more than 15 minutes investigating the issue and getting it resolved.
Kind of like balancing your checkbook; how much time do you spend doing it, and how much money you recovered compared to the hours invested? I keep a very good idea of what I have in the bank to the nearest $10 or so, but I'm not going to waste time looking for a $1 bank mistake. I scan over my bank statements and if there's a $200 mistake, I'll see it.
There was a guy on the electronics newsgroups a while back who must have posted a dozen times complaining about an overcharge from Mouser that turned out to be about three dollars. He spent a lot of time on the phone, escalated through the managers, etc.
I actually started a website to help with this problem (can't have every skill). It's more aimed at machining stuff, but I intend to expand it to cover other things like electronic design. http://hwn.macetech.com
I haven't had time to work on it for a while, but it's something I really want to finish. I didn't know anything about PHP or MySQL when I started it, and I developed everything from scratch including a user login management system.
That's a bad attitude for an EE to have. The true goal of the EE is to know about everything. This is sometimes necessary, because electrical engineering often involves significant elements of mechanical and chemical engineering, as well as mathematics, physics(especially optics and thermodynamics), biology, and computer science. Refusing to learn acceptable methods in any other branch of engineering or science is like chopping off a leg before running a marathon.
You know, why doesn't the US Patent Office simply open up a web submission system? Whip up your own patent document, upload it, and it's automatically assigned a number.
It's not really the Patent Office's job to ensure that every patent is totally original and has never been done before. A patent is only really used when the invention ends up in court. If it's not defendable, it will be nullified. However, who wants to sit across from Microsoft in a courtroom? Maybe if you slip and break your leg on the sidewalk in front of their office building. Even in that case you'd probably end up paying $10,000 to repair the scuffmarks you made in the concrete.
The coward is absolutely correct; CS is generally accepted as an easier major than EE. No EE major I knew, including myself, had even the slightest problem with the introductory programming class (which was C++ based). As an EE, you don't get any of the classes that really go into methods of generating algorithms and architecting code structures from top-level concepts to the tiny details, yet you end up having to use some of the most arcane languages in existence. Verilog, VHDL, AHDL, assembly for who knows how many different platforms, ABEL, MATLAB, SPICE; dozens of languages that may not necessarily be all that bad on their own, but every vendor has a different one. And that doesn't count the complicated mathematical structures you need to use to calculate the behavior of even simple circuits, semiconductors, signal processing, and electromagnetic waves and fields. With CS at least the majority of the concepts are language-agnostic and tie together pretty seamlessly from freshman to senior year.
I actually have one of the Northern Light Technologies SADELIGHT therapy lights. No, I didn't have seasonal affective disorder, it just happened to be at Goodwill for six dollars. You can still buy them from the site above for $225. Whatta deal, eh? It's the best, brightest, shadowless natural-colored work light I've ever had. Best part of all is that the bulbs are still only $15 each, so I can keep this thing going once the fluorescents wear out! It seriously lights up a room like a halogen shop light, except it's a nice diffused sunlight.
I see that Northern Light sells the Dawn Simulator clock for $120. Well, I wanted to build this myself anyway, plus my little device works with any old lamp.
Ever notice how it's so difficult sometimes to wake up when it's dark outside? It seems that I'm at higher risk for getting up late when it's overcast or stormy outside. It seems that the light level triggers how awake you are. If I have to wake up early, I'll usually leave a light on in the room; it helps a lot. But it's not the best solution, and I'd love to smooth out the roughly torn edge between sleep and consciousness when the buzzer screams at you.
I'm building a clock that includes a wall socket. You plug a lamp into the socket, and half an hour before your set wakeup time, the lamp begins glowing. It increases brightness gradually over a half hour so that by the time you need to wake up, you already are. It's not really a new idea, but it's fun. It uses a realtime clock chip, a microcontroller, and a triac for power control. Maybe not so much hacking...I guess it does "hack" a desk lamp into a wakeup alarm notification device.
Most of my other hacks are computer related; for example hacking a Sandisk 6-in-1 memory card reader to work with ALL CompactFlash cards, instead of only the new ones, with a single wire. I hacked a Nintendo R.O.B. into an internet-controlled pan/tilt webcam mount in an hour or two. Also ran a small server in college which used fetchmail to check for new messages, and would flash one LED over my desk and one in the door's peephole, so I knew I had mail just by looking down the hall from a friend's room. Lots of random stuff like that. My most recent major project was a small CNC machine, the computer, power supply, and driver electronics housed inside the case of an old Yokogawa data analyzer.
Clumsy? LUNCH!?! I thought the analogy was more or less the only one possible; I mean, if a hosting company can be considered a place for businesses to be set up, and access is removed to that location, then what else would you suggest to be a better analogy? Now, finish your luncheon and start right in upon your afternoon tea. And a hint from across the pond: brush your teeth!;-)
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Yeah the newer ones typically get up to 32 hours out of that. Sonys, specifically.
Ehh...yeah...and I noticed he's got different brands of batteries and even chargeables, standard, and alkaline batteries all mixed together. That's quite a little cocktail of things that can go wrong. Once that dry cell nine volt dies and the alkaline hasn't yet, the circuit isn't so hot any more...or maybe it is hot, in a bad way.
Just get 10 NiMH AAA batteries and wire them in series. They're 1.2 volts, so you'll get 12 to start off. It'll end up being about 1.75"x1.875"x.75" if you don't use holders, otherwise you can use two 4-cell holders and one 2-cell holder in a small box, which would make it a lot easier to pull out the batteries for recharging. This gets you about 600 extra milliamps, I have no idea what the iPod drains. If you used AAs instead, that would get you up to 1800ma. But 10 AAs are a little heavier.
Might as well go for the 12 volt lantern battery!
Yeah, that's pretty amazing. I was only able to manage about 40 pages in school, and that was in double-spaced 12.1pt font with 1.1 inch margins....
A 465 is good, but a 465B is better. The Tek 465 is about 30 years old now, and the 465B is only 20 years old. I was able to pick up a nice 465B with all manuals and accessories on eBay for $100 recently.
If the poster really wants a digital oscilloscope, head on over to fpga4fun.com. There's some neat little FPGA projects, based on a little FPGA board the guy designed and is now selling for $50. One of the applications is a digital sampling oscilloscope; it actually looks pretty neat. With the FPGA board and ADC board, it's pretty cheap too.
Anyone capable of following your logic must have a pretzel-shaped head.
Ehhh...that's pretty flawed. The difference is that with capitalism we're selling a product on the open market, whereas in the virus example we're threatening to destroy a large segment of the population and holding everyone for ransom (especially the girlfriend of the guy who will eventually storm the Fortress of Doom and defeat the bad guy and his minions singlehandedly, and then blow it all up).
Wow, you're scary. That's twice as evil. After they pay the ransom, release the virus anyway and then charge for the vaccine!
Which is why computer science really isn't. It's pretty much just a hybrid of logic and mathematics.
I'm from up north, but I'll give it a try:
"Ootbreark."
"Owwwwootbreeark."
Nope, sorry.
Or even:
Darkest of night
With the moon shining bright
There's a set goin' strong
Lotta things goin' on
The virus of the hour
Has an air of great power
The dudes have envied it for so long
Oooh, Superflu
You're gonna make your fortune by and by
But if you lose, don't ask no questions why
The only game you know is Do or Die (mostly Die)
Second line for beatings to the right, please.
Sounds like a superhero name. "What's wrong with that guy? It's mono! It's a cold! It's....SUPERFLU!"
Please take a number to administer beatings.
I don't earn $40 an hour, I'm trying to actually get some money back instead of losing it all in wasted time.
There is nothing you can do to force a business to improve itself. They will only improve if they want to.
Once you're past the initial complaint, you're just burning up time. Staying on the phone for hours only teaches them that they don't have to resolve complaints in a timely manner, customers will wait forever to get their $20. Right now it's almost the norm to spend a long time waiting for support. Companies gauge how long customers will wait, and cut their staff accordingly. So, I place the blame for slow response on the people who are stupid enough to endure it.
No, my analysis is not flawed. I never said that I would just let it go, I said that there was a limit to the amount of time I would spend trying to get my money back.
If I have to spend too much time forcing a business to provide adequate quality service, I won't do business with them again. I tell them as much, and most of the time they fix the problem and I will do business with them again. Most businesses really aren't out there trying to provide bad service; it's usually human error and companies usually try to get the issue resolved in a minimum amount of time.
The pressure is applied to the business within the first minute of your complaint. They know that if they don't satisfactorily resolve your issue, you probably won't buy from them again, and you'll tell your friends not to either. Any time you spend after that first minute is just you trying to get your money back. Multiple calls and hours on the phone will not pressure a business to improve itself. If you have to spend that much time, the business has no intention of improving itself.
Don't stay on hold for 45 minutes to get a $5 rebate, with the idea that you're helping the business world into some enlightened age of customer service utopia. All you're doing is reinforcing the fact that they do not need to resolve complaints in a timely manner; customers will wait for them and take whatever abuse is required to get their five bucks.
My thoughts exactly. I typically look at the money I'll gain from pushing the issue, and then figure that the maximum amount of time I'll spend on it is no more than how long it would take me to earn that much at $40 an hour. The other week I called in about a $10 shipping overcharge on some parts I ordered, but I spent no more than 15 minutes investigating the issue and getting it resolved.
Kind of like balancing your checkbook; how much time do you spend doing it, and how much money you recovered compared to the hours invested? I keep a very good idea of what I have in the bank to the nearest $10 or so, but I'm not going to waste time looking for a $1 bank mistake. I scan over my bank statements and if there's a $200 mistake, I'll see it.
There was a guy on the electronics newsgroups a while back who must have posted a dozen times complaining about an overcharge from Mouser that turned out to be about three dollars. He spent a lot of time on the phone, escalated through the managers, etc.
I actually started a website to help with this problem (can't have every skill). It's more aimed at machining stuff, but I intend to expand it to cover other things like electronic design. http://hwn.macetech.com
I haven't had time to work on it for a while, but it's something I really want to finish. I didn't know anything about PHP or MySQL when I started it, and I developed everything from scratch including a user login management system.
But, it didn't have Jane Fonda holding Kerry in a headlock and giving him a noogie.
That's a bad attitude for an EE to have. The true goal of the EE is to know about everything. This is sometimes necessary, because electrical engineering often involves significant elements of mechanical and chemical engineering, as well as mathematics, physics(especially optics and thermodynamics), biology, and computer science. Refusing to learn acceptable methods in any other branch of engineering or science is like chopping off a leg before running a marathon.
If you want to complain about dupes, what about that "Have you Meta Moderated lately?" article that always seems to be on the main page?
You know, why doesn't the US Patent Office simply open up a web submission system? Whip up your own patent document, upload it, and it's automatically assigned a number.
It's not really the Patent Office's job to ensure that every patent is totally original and has never been done before. A patent is only really used when the invention ends up in court. If it's not defendable, it will be nullified. However, who wants to sit across from Microsoft in a courtroom? Maybe if you slip and break your leg on the sidewalk in front of their office building. Even in that case you'd probably end up paying $10,000 to repair the scuffmarks you made in the concrete.
The coward is absolutely correct; CS is generally accepted as an easier major than EE. No EE major I knew, including myself, had even the slightest problem with the introductory programming class (which was C++ based). As an EE, you don't get any of the classes that really go into methods of generating algorithms and architecting code structures from top-level concepts to the tiny details, yet you end up having to use some of the most arcane languages in existence. Verilog, VHDL, AHDL, assembly for who knows how many different platforms, ABEL, MATLAB, SPICE; dozens of languages that may not necessarily be all that bad on their own, but every vendor has a different one. And that doesn't count the complicated mathematical structures you need to use to calculate the behavior of even simple circuits, semiconductors, signal processing, and electromagnetic waves and fields. With CS at least the majority of the concepts are language-agnostic and tie together pretty seamlessly from freshman to senior year.
I actually have one of the Northern Light Technologies SADELIGHT therapy lights. No, I didn't have seasonal affective disorder, it just happened to be at Goodwill for six dollars. You can still buy them from the site above for $225. Whatta deal, eh? It's the best, brightest, shadowless natural-colored work light I've ever had. Best part of all is that the bulbs are still only $15 each, so I can keep this thing going once the fluorescents wear out! It seriously lights up a room like a halogen shop light, except it's a nice diffused sunlight.
I see that Northern Light sells the Dawn Simulator clock for $120. Well, I wanted to build this myself anyway, plus my little device works with any old lamp.
Ever notice how it's so difficult sometimes to wake up when it's dark outside? It seems that I'm at higher risk for getting up late when it's overcast or stormy outside. It seems that the light level triggers how awake you are. If I have to wake up early, I'll usually leave a light on in the room; it helps a lot. But it's not the best solution, and I'd love to smooth out the roughly torn edge between sleep and consciousness when the buzzer screams at you.
I'm building a clock that includes a wall socket. You plug a lamp into the socket, and half an hour before your set wakeup time, the lamp begins glowing. It increases brightness gradually over a half hour so that by the time you need to wake up, you already are. It's not really a new idea, but it's fun. It uses a realtime clock chip, a microcontroller, and a triac for power control. Maybe not so much hacking...I guess it does "hack" a desk lamp into a wakeup alarm notification device.
Most of my other hacks are computer related; for example hacking a Sandisk 6-in-1 memory card reader to work with ALL CompactFlash cards, instead of only the new ones, with a single wire. I hacked a Nintendo R.O.B. into an internet-controlled pan/tilt webcam mount in an hour or two. Also ran a small server in college which used fetchmail to check for new messages, and would flash one LED over my desk and one in the door's peephole, so I knew I had mail just by looking down the hall from a friend's room. Lots of random stuff like that. My most recent major project was a small CNC machine, the computer, power supply, and driver electronics housed inside the case of an old Yokogawa data analyzer.
I think a several-block radio is what my neighbors have installed in their car.
Clumsy? LUNCH!?! I thought the analogy was more or less the only one possible; I mean, if a hosting company can be considered a place for businesses to be set up, and access is removed to that location, then what else would you suggest to be a better analogy? Now, finish your luncheon and start right in upon your afternoon tea. And a hint from across the pond: brush your teeth! ;-)