I don't know what a "motherload" is. Is that about two toddlers, three bags of groceries, a purse, keys, coffee mug and cellphone?
It also occurs to me that perhaps we're talking about a mother lode, taken from gold mining and referring to a specific area of rich quartz veins, and now used to indicate "striking it big" or discovering a wealth of materials or information.
And some of the guys in the next building over put their tools to good use. See, there was a grad student working there who had to live in an apartment that was converted from the last few rooms of a freshman hall. Totally irrelevant to the story, but she was really hot. Anyway, she left for a weekend, and the guys got some two-by-fours, drywall, paint, and miscellaneous hardware. When she came back, her room was gone without a trace. They even matched the baseboard.
Of course there was the one in the other building where they rappelled down the outside to get into the RA's room, then completely filled it with packing peanuts.
My freshman floor wasn't so original, we just taped newspaper over one guy's door for three mornings in a row, and waited outside for him to come through. Of course the second and third times he leaped through with style, but on the third time we had dragged a spare wardrobe in front of the door.
Some people get nauseous looking at practically any video source. I don't suffer from this, but I know a lot of people who can't watch or play 3D games.
I don't think it's really a measure of how sharp a display is. Ever been in an Omnimax? That's a lot more immersive than a flat display, and higher resolution too. Seems like these same nauseous viewers would get the same reaction watching a regular film movie.
The best one I've seen doesn't scale well for the office, but could work. This was a dorm prank on an resident assistant: the RA had a stereo and decent set of speakers. Someone a few rooms down had a reasonably powerful system as well. A set of speaker wires was run out the "control room" and directly to the speakers in the RA's room through the window. At some ungodly hour the "control room" began playing some annoying, embarrassing song at full volume. Now, imagine trying to stumble out of a loft and turn off the stereo while mostly asleep...except that no matter what buttons you push, it won't turn off! A remarkable success.
I guess a similar thing could be done with a co-worker's computer and an audio cable, just run it to line-in and turn the volume way up. It'll take a few seconds before they find the volume control. Play something vile like Backstreet Boys or Britney.
Hah, the AutoCorrect one is always good. You can have a lot of fun going all the way with the script kiddie theme. Change "the" to "TEH" and "!" to "!!111!!111oneoneone!1", don't forget "good" to "ro0LZ" and "bad" to "sux0rs". Invert common letter pairs like "th" and "gh" and "qu". And set some letters to always correct to their capital or numerical or punctuational counterpart.
This one take a little work, but is worth it. This assumes Windows of course, but it's not impossible to do with another OS.
Make a new shortcut for everything they use, either on the desktop or in the Start menu, or Quicklaunch too. Change the name to be the name of a different program, and set the icon to use for the one for the original shortcut. The idea here is to have Excel open up when they click on Word, Internet Explorer when they try to run Excel, an MS-DOS prompt when they want to run Access. If they don't have admin rights, they'll have to learn by experiment where each program is located.
Guaranteed to stun the clueless. Since desktop icons will show the little shortcut arrow, go to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cur rentVersion\ Explorer\Shell Icons] and set the "29" key to equal the path and filename of a blank icon. Or get TweakUI to do it.
But the Segway differs in that the axis of instability is perpendicular to the direction of travel, not parallel. The center of gravity about that axis cannot be shifted easily by slight steering corrections.
Therefore I pose that the Segway is at fault for people falling off of it, not the riders.
I don't think you understand. The Segway uses a network of processors, accelerometers, and gyroscopes to perform a continous inverse kinematics calculation involving many variables, such as passenger weight, differing wheel speeds, shifts in the center of gravity, wheel traction, and acceleration.
The Segway is continously monitoring and powering the motors in thrust and drag modes to maintain a range of angular positions of the passenger. What is happening is that the Segway is apparently going along fine, when a sudden circumstance requires a high current pulse to the drive wheels in order to maintain the correct passenger pitch. That current pulse is not available, because the Segway software did not have a correct idea of the current battery level and capabilities, and did not limit the Segway operating parameters so that it can't get into a non-recoverable situation.
The Segway's intent is to remove the need to balance from the the passenger's control. The Segway does not just slow down to a safe and balanced halt in these situations; the PID loop goes into complete runaway and the passenger suddenly finds themselves on the ground. Sure, many people could manage balancing on an unpowered Segway, if they had enough practice. But to suddenly go into a nonpowered state is a situation that normal human reaction times cannot cope with.
The effect would be almost exactly like being blindfolded, and being told to walk into a certain direction. Then you are told to run, and as you are accelerating you step onto a patch of ice. Totally unprepared, you will fall down. You get the same result if you were told to run in a direction and then slow down suddenly, and there was a patch of ice there too.
I think my point was that the Segway at no point has stability inherent to its mechanical design. Without the motors running, it'll slip out from under you instantly. If you stop pedaling your bike, you'll coast to a controlled stop. You also have more of a choice in the matter....
See above for my comments on the gyroscopic effect as one (of several) aiding the rolling stability of a bicycle.
It does play a part. Think how a gyroscope works: when the wheel is tilted in one axis, it will want to tilt in the other axis. When the front bicycle wheel tilts sideways, the wheel turns in the direction of tilt, which moves the center of gravity back over the path of travel. This doesn't correct all possible balance problems (especially at low speed), but it does correct a lot of the minor ones, and provides the rider with a physical cue for action which eventually is done reflexively.
This is why it's much easier to ride a bike at full speed, and even without using your hands at all. It also explains why a wheel by itself will roll upright unsupported until the speed goes down.
Well, the point is that the Segway is supposed to do all the balancing for you.
Honestly, the first time I saw Segway I thought, "What happens when you're chugging up a hill and the batteries give out?" It's inherently unstable, unlike a bicycle there is no gyroscopic force to aid the rider in maintaining balance.
The software upgrade probably just gives the Segway less optimism about its battery life, providing a more aggressive alert when the battery reaches a certain level.
That's kind of like a book about people who read, or a movie portraying people watching movies.
Who would go to a tourist attraction, which is dedicated to proving how tourist attractions ruined the way of life for that place? Someone in search of the elusive "one hand clapping" sound, maybe.
We do something kind of similar at work, where we print stuff 24/7 on huge presses running hundreds of feet per minute.
For some of the variable imaging there is row of hacked inkjet cartridges, I think Lexmark with the removable ink-sponge cartridges. They snap off the ink cartridge, and snap in a custom plate with a tube running to a pump and bucket of ink. The electronics are all custom.
I haven't worked directly with them, but even if I did I couldn't tell you any more. I guess you could take it as proof that it's possible...just grab a printer and start playing with a multimeter and power supply. Once you get the right voltage and pin mapping, you're ready to design a solution. If you talk to a professional ink supplier, they may be able to get you an ink formulation that will work in the cartridge...it has to be special. These can work for a long time at a pretty good speed.
So it seems the spammers are lashing out, in the face of recent successes like the California spam ban. What do they think they'll accomplish?
Supposedly there are about 150 spammers doing the majority of the world's spam. I can't believe they can keep the entire world from eventually picking up the pitchforks. I guess they think that in order to control a thing, you must annoy it repeatedly for years on end?
If you do a lot of business on the web or by mail, and your physical location doesn't matter, you might post 100 versions of your site, each with the zip code of a large metropolitan area. But then how many people would do that?
Far too many. It's already rampant on job sites where you can search by location. Those annoying link-portal sites will also offer "localized exposure" services or some other buzzphrase.
Too obvious! This is a "why didn't I think of that five years ago" moment.
Mobile input is THE barrier to true interactive use of wireless data. I could see a keypad like this speeding up my mobile text input by at least four to five times, yet still non-clunky enough to fit in a flip-phone.
Well, one benefit I can see is that you don't have to drive a huge (in silicon terms) chunk of copper over to the next chip. I guess they have the distances and other parameters figured out so that this capacitive coupling is actually an advantage compared to copper traces.
They could probably do something similar with arrays of laser diodes beaming out the edges of the chips. Then again, maybe the capacitive coupling is better than that in terms of power consumption and speed.
NASA Press Release: Due to an unprecedented amount of web traffic on the announcement of the Galileo space probe's imminent plunge into the Jovian atmosphere, the Galileo comms computing center was brought to its knees. NASA engineers showed their ingenuity once more, as the flood of internet traffic was directed to the Galileo probe itself, heating Transistor QB-2542a, allowing the main antenna to unfold and allow the original planned communication range, in addition to acting as a miniature solar sail to push Galileo on a recovery arc around Jupiter. NASA Galileo Command would like to extend appreciation to Slashdot and its readers for allowing the unqualified successes of the Galileo mission to continue.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what a "motherload" is. Is that about two toddlers, three bags of groceries, a purse, keys, coffee mug and cellphone?
It also occurs to me that perhaps we're talking about a mother lode, taken from gold mining and referring to a specific area of rich quartz veins, and now used to indicate "striking it big" or discovering a wealth of materials or information.
Ah, well, we could build lofts!
And some of the guys in the next building over put their tools to good use. See, there was a grad student working there who had to live in an apartment that was converted from the last few rooms of a freshman hall. Totally irrelevant to the story, but she was really hot. Anyway, she left for a weekend, and the guys got some two-by-fours, drywall, paint, and miscellaneous hardware. When she came back, her room was gone without a trace. They even matched the baseboard.
Of course there was the one in the other building where they rappelled down the outside to get into the RA's room, then completely filled it with packing peanuts.
My freshman floor wasn't so original, we just taped newspaper over one guy's door for three mornings in a row, and waited outside for him to come through. Of course the second and third times he leaped through with style, but on the third time we had dragged a spare wardrobe in front of the door.
Some people get nauseous looking at practically any video source. I don't suffer from this, but I know a lot of people who can't watch or play 3D games.
I don't think it's really a measure of how sharp a display is. Ever been in an Omnimax? That's a lot more immersive than a flat display, and higher resolution too. Seems like these same nauseous viewers would get the same reaction watching a regular film movie.
The best one I've seen doesn't scale well for the office, but could work. This was a dorm prank on an resident assistant: the RA had a stereo and decent set of speakers. Someone a few rooms down had a reasonably powerful system as well. A set of speaker wires was run out the "control room" and directly to the speakers in the RA's room through the window. At some ungodly hour the "control room" began playing some annoying, embarrassing song at full volume. Now, imagine trying to stumble out of a loft and turn off the stereo while mostly asleep...except that no matter what buttons you push, it won't turn off! A remarkable success.
I guess a similar thing could be done with a co-worker's computer and an audio cable, just run it to line-in and turn the volume way up. It'll take a few seconds before they find the volume control. Play something vile like Backstreet Boys or Britney.
Hah, the AutoCorrect one is always good. You can have a lot of fun going all the way with the script kiddie theme. Change "the" to "TEH" and "!" to "!!111!!111oneoneone!1", don't forget "good" to "ro0LZ" and "bad" to "sux0rs". Invert common letter pairs like "th" and "gh" and "qu". And set some letters to always correct to their capital or numerical or punctuational counterpart.
You know, I find it pretty wierd that not only did we post pretty much the same idea, but our usernames aren't much different either.
This one take a little work, but is worth it. This assumes Windows of course, but it's not impossible to do with another OS.
r rentVersion\
Make a new shortcut for everything they use, either on the desktop or in the Start menu, or Quicklaunch too. Change the name to be the name of a different program, and set the icon to use for the one for the original shortcut. The idea here is to have Excel open up when they click on Word, Internet Explorer when they try to run Excel, an MS-DOS prompt when they want to run Access. If they don't have admin rights, they'll have to learn by experiment where each program is located.
Guaranteed to stun the clueless. Since desktop icons will show the little shortcut arrow, go to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cu
Explorer\Shell Icons] and set the "29" key to equal the path and filename of a blank icon. Or get TweakUI to do it.
But the Segway differs in that the axis of instability is perpendicular to the direction of travel, not parallel. The center of gravity about that axis cannot be shifted easily by slight steering corrections.
Therefore I pose that the Segway is at fault for people falling off of it, not the riders.
I don't think you understand. The Segway uses a network of processors, accelerometers, and gyroscopes to perform a continous inverse kinematics calculation involving many variables, such as passenger weight, differing wheel speeds, shifts in the center of gravity, wheel traction, and acceleration.
The Segway is continously monitoring and powering the motors in thrust and drag modes to maintain a range of angular positions of the passenger. What is happening is that the Segway is apparently going along fine, when a sudden circumstance requires a high current pulse to the drive wheels in order to maintain the correct passenger pitch. That current pulse is not available, because the Segway software did not have a correct idea of the current battery level and capabilities, and did not limit the Segway operating parameters so that it can't get into a non-recoverable situation.
The Segway's intent is to remove the need to balance from the the passenger's control. The Segway does not just slow down to a safe and balanced halt in these situations; the PID loop goes into complete runaway and the passenger suddenly finds themselves on the ground. Sure, many people could manage balancing on an unpowered Segway, if they had enough practice. But to suddenly go into a nonpowered state is a situation that normal human reaction times cannot cope with.
The effect would be almost exactly like being blindfolded, and being told to walk into a certain direction. Then you are told to run, and as you are accelerating you step onto a patch of ice. Totally unprepared, you will fall down. You get the same result if you were told to run in a direction and then slow down suddenly, and there was a patch of ice there too.
I think my point was that the Segway at no point has stability inherent to its mechanical design. Without the motors running, it'll slip out from under you instantly. If you stop pedaling your bike, you'll coast to a controlled stop. You also have more of a choice in the matter....
See above for my comments on the gyroscopic effect as one (of several) aiding the rolling stability of a bicycle.
Ah, but did I say how the gyroscopic force works?
It does play a part. Think how a gyroscope works: when the wheel is tilted in one axis, it will want to tilt in the other axis. When the front bicycle wheel tilts sideways, the wheel turns in the direction of tilt, which moves the center of gravity back over the path of travel. This doesn't correct all possible balance problems (especially at low speed), but it does correct a lot of the minor ones, and provides the rider with a physical cue for action which eventually is done reflexively.
This is why it's much easier to ride a bike at full speed, and even without using your hands at all. It also explains why a wheel by itself will roll upright unsupported until the speed goes down.
Well, the point is that the Segway is supposed to do all the balancing for you.
Honestly, the first time I saw Segway I thought, "What happens when you're chugging up a hill and the batteries give out?" It's inherently unstable, unlike a bicycle there is no gyroscopic force to aid the rider in maintaining balance.
The software upgrade probably just gives the Segway less optimism about its battery life, providing a more aggressive alert when the battery reaches a certain level.
The Touriseum, eh? A museum dedicated to tourism.
That's kind of like a book about people who read, or a movie portraying people watching movies.
Who would go to a tourist attraction, which is dedicated to proving how tourist attractions ruined the way of life for that place? Someone in search of the elusive "one hand clapping" sound, maybe.
The format of that web page is PERFECT for printing in banner mode on an inkjet printer. Using a roll of toilet paper, of course!
We do something kind of similar at work, where we print stuff 24/7 on huge presses running hundreds of feet per minute.
For some of the variable imaging there is row of hacked inkjet cartridges, I think Lexmark with the removable ink-sponge cartridges. They snap off the ink cartridge, and snap in a custom plate with a tube running to a pump and bucket of ink. The electronics are all custom.
I haven't worked directly with them, but even if I did I couldn't tell you any more. I guess you could take it as proof that it's possible...just grab a printer and start playing with a multimeter and power supply. Once you get the right voltage and pin mapping, you're ready to design a solution. If you talk to a professional ink supplier, they may be able to get you an ink formulation that will work in the cartridge...it has to be special. These can work for a long time at a pretty good speed.
You'll need the following:
And then you realize that you could probably drive the station wagon to Jupiter faster than the data could be downloaded there.
So it seems the spammers are lashing out, in the face of recent successes like the California spam ban. What do they think they'll accomplish?
Supposedly there are about 150 spammers doing the majority of the world's spam. I can't believe they can keep the entire world from eventually picking up the pitchforks. I guess they think that in order to control a thing, you must annoy it repeatedly for years on end?
That's got to be the funniest thing I've read today. I actually snickered, which is saying a lot after 8 mindnumbing hours at work.
If you do a lot of business on the web or by mail, and your physical location doesn't matter, you might post 100 versions of your site, each with the zip code of a large metropolitan area. But then how many people would do that?
Far too many. It's already rampant on job sites where you can search by location. Those annoying link-portal sites will also offer "localized exposure" services or some other buzzphrase.
And immediately pushes to rename the company he works for.
*cue Blue Man Group whirling around like idiots*
*fade spinning blue guy to swirling logo*
@
Spintel Inside
No, I think they were serious. Just didn't think too hard about which has been sticking around longer, QWERTY or the alphabet.
Plain alphabetical order is better than a poorly designed layout that sticks around because most people are afraid of change.
You deserve a +5, Funny. What exactly is alphabetical order, if not a layout people have been afraid to change for a few thousand years?
Too obvious! This is a "why didn't I think of that five years ago" moment.
Mobile input is THE barrier to true interactive use of wireless data. I could see a keypad like this speeding up my mobile text input by at least four to five times, yet still non-clunky enough to fit in a flip-phone.
Well, one benefit I can see is that you don't have to drive a huge (in silicon terms) chunk of copper over to the next chip. I guess they have the distances and other parameters figured out so that this capacitive coupling is actually an advantage compared to copper traces.
They could probably do something similar with arrays of laser diodes beaming out the edges of the chips. Then again, maybe the capacitive coupling is better than that in terms of power consumption and speed.
NASA Press Release: Due to an unprecedented amount of web traffic on the announcement of the Galileo space probe's imminent plunge into the Jovian atmosphere, the Galileo comms computing center was brought to its knees. NASA engineers showed their ingenuity once more, as the flood of internet traffic was directed to the Galileo probe itself, heating Transistor QB-2542a, allowing the main antenna to unfold and allow the original planned communication range, in addition to acting as a miniature solar sail to push Galileo on a recovery arc around Jupiter. NASA Galileo Command would like to extend appreciation to Slashdot and its readers for allowing the unqualified successes of the Galileo mission to continue.