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User: deathcow

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  1. More Accurate Findings on Over 20% of Online Black Friday Sales Came From Mobile Devices · · Score: 1

    Scientists confirmed that when IOS and Android users purchased the same items, at the same store, the IOS users still accounted for 28% more revenue.

  2. My own medical device software mistake. on Internal Bug: Code Flaw May Lead to Wrong Dose From Infusion Pump · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wrote all the "C" code which controlled a robotic bone lengthening device. (Read up on the ilizarov procedure.) At the most basic, it is used to make your legs or arms longer, a tiny bit per day, just over an inch per month of growth. The doctors would break the bone, after having installed an external mechanical frame holding you together. They would slowly lengthen the mechanical frame by 1mm every day. They would use wrenches and do it four times a day, 1/4mm per lengthening. Our machine would do it once per minute (growing your bone at 604 nanometers additional length per minute.) I used a table in ROM of how many pulses to do, how often. A couple of the entries were wrong and resulted in the wrong amount of bone lengthening.

  3. LOTR Quote on BigDog Robot Gets Much Bigger · · Score: 5, Informative

    The LS3 Moves So Loud, We Could Have Shot It In The Dark

  4. Interesting on Stunning Time Lapse of the Earth From the ISS · · Score: 2, Funny

    I thought they weren't going to fly over Compton/Los Angeles anymore at nighttime after the Soyuz-jackings last year?

  5. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator on Will Graphene Revolutionize the 21st Century? · · Score: 1

    > What will it be transmuted into?

    We can run out of a material even though it is still firmly trapped in Earths gravity well. For example the element Bismuth (which is only twice as common as gold abundance wise) is used in large amounts in Pepto Bismol. Once this is eaten and excreted, it really becomes unrecoverable again.

  6. Re:I wonder what the Air Force needs to track... on DARPA's New Hi-Tech Telescope · · Score: 4, Informative

    Air Force has huge departments dedicated to space.
    http://www.afspc.af.mil/units/index.asp

    They manage GPS satellites as well as scan the skies and catalog 10's of thousands of pieces of space debris.

  7. Re:Most overpriced? on Tesla CEO Says Model S Will Support Third-Party Apps · · Score: 1

    > Costs them more to bill you for the text message than they likely spend delivering it.

    Yes, but only if you ignore the costs of -- Cell towers. Antennas. Radios. Packet Control Units. Amplifiers. Receivers. Transcoders. Mobile Switching Centers. Private Lines over SONET rings. Fiber optics equipment. Racks of GSM base station blades. Switch software licenses and support contracts to people like Ericsson. WAP headcount licenses. Software licenses. More software licenses. And also the salaries of network engineers, cellular engineers, trunking engineers, traffic analysts, operations staff, support engineers, and some management costs in there as well.

  8. my prediction on LOFAR, the World's Biggest Telescope, Is Up and Running · · Score: 4, Funny

    LOFAR will find a stream of information from an extraterrestrial source. When we decode it, we'll find that it's archives of extraterrestrial warez.

  9. The Cool Guy Way To Do it on Why the Arduino Won and Why It's Here To Stay · · Score: 1

    Order your Microcontrollers for $3-$4 from http://www.digikey.com/

    Buy an ISP programmer from Pololu for $20 http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/1300

    Download AVR Studio 4 for free from Atmel
    http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=2725

    GO

  10. We can only hope... on Foxconn Workers Getting Raise With Apple Subsidies · · Score: 5, Funny

    That enough of their souls are still poured into these incredible, sleek products to maintain the extremely high level of magic and wonder we've become accustomed to finding in each amazingly designed box.

  11. Stats The Cellular Provider Sees on Testing and Mapping a Cellular Data Network? · · Score: 2, Informative

    At least, this is what I see working with SNMP data coming off dumps from the cellular base transceiver stations attached to our towers.

    Every 15 minutes, every GSM handset measures the perceived strength of the tower signal it is using, this is reported to the tower, and we record them all. Also every 15 minutes, the strength of the handset signal, from the perspective of the tower is sampled and recorded.

    These readings go into buckets, for example if a reading showed a -78 dbm signal, it goes in the -78dbm bucket. Before long, a histogram can be generated with the datain the buckets, and we can see typical distribution for receive performance - for both handsets and the tower. Different towers have very different "signatures" in this data.

    You may go around sampling receive performance, (which would be interesting) but I don't think you'll be able to map how well the cellular system is receiving from you.

  12. a filesystem for flash devices on Linux 2.6.34 Released · · Score: 5, Funny

    > a filesystem for flash devices

    here we go again, unless we stop supporting flash, Apple has refused to distribute dual-boot Linux enabled iPads

  13. I just blew a seal... on Bill Gates Funds Seawater-Spraying Cloud Machines · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...700 feet into the air

  14. PREDICTIONS ARE IN on FCC Allows Blocking of Set-Top Box Outputs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1) pirates unaffected
    2) legit consumers annoyed and prevented from seeing their movie

  15. And While You're Doing That on One In Eight To Cut Cable and Satellite TV In 2010 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'll be letting my Dual Tuner Dish DVR boxes grab all our favorite shows up to two at a time. We'll watch them exactly when we want to, and we'll skip over all the commercials by pressing the Yellow Arrow key on our remote 6 or 7 times.

  16. I invented the secret cow level on Verizon Changes FiOS AUP, -1, Offtopic · · Score: 1

    At least I always credited myself : ) My name was Deathcow back in Diablo-1 days, (and thus explains the origins of my name here). For some reason I always enjoyed rounding up a group of people in the chatrooms to visit the "secret cow level". My name lent authenticity to my offers. Once I had a group of hardy adventurers I would lead them to the cows standing around in the field. I would give careful instructions to all of them about where to stand and then tell them to stay put while I opened the gateway. This will begin to test patience after a while. I would then begin to blame the individuals for items they are holding/etc.

  17. Re:How big? on Heart of the Milky Way Photos From NASA · · Score: 1

    The entire picture appears about 45 arcminutes across. So if the full Moon drifted in front of this picture, it would cover all but the outer edges.

  18. Re:Lecture Fruit! on Low-Energy Laser Etching May Replace Fruit Labels · · Score: 4, Informative

    >> Grapefruit interacts with many drugs - it can make many drugs way more effective than expected.

    > Please elaborate. Please!

    My daughter had a liver transplant as a infant. She takes a single immune suppressant drug now called "Prograf" or known as Tacrolimus. The only warning on it is "Don't eat grapefruit while taking this." It makes the immune suppressing power much stronger.

  19. > That, and the insane price for movies, is why BD hasn't caught on like DVD did.

    Blu-ray is catching on to the tune of 200% - 400% growth for 2009. There are plenty of $9 and $12 blu-ray movies.

    > What would I do with blank BD disks?

    Store 94,000 quarter megabyte jpeg images organized by fetish and hair color.

  20. Compare those pics with 45nm chip design. on IBM Images a Single Molecule · · Score: 2, Interesting

    45nm is 450 angstrom, so you can see by the 20 angstrom ruler in one of the pictures that chip design is getting pretty small. In fact, you can see the atoms lined up in the traces of chips!
    http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/afm-bpm-e-beam.jpg

  21. Remarkable Idea on US Supercomputer Lead Sparks Russian Govt's Competitive Drive · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Send some dudes to America with some cash and buy some nice computing equipment. Do you have some serious computing to do? Or do you have a serious need to build new computers?

  22. Blue Eyes? Blue Vision? on Dye Used In Blue M&Ms Can Lessen Spinal Injury · · Score: 1

    Notice that the eyes have completely changed color as well. I'm thinking I do not want my eyes filled with blue tint.

  23. Re:"its basically almost impossible to do. especia on Astronomer Photographs Meteor Through Telescope · · Score: 1

    Gather light from 1 arcminute of sky? He was photographing Andromeda galaxy, which is like 180 x 60 arcmin minimally for his field of view. So his chances of getting this are 10,800 times higher than your calcs.

  24. Re:Another example of useless science journalism on One of the Coolest Places In the Universe · · Score: 1

    > Honestly, it's embarrassing to see such
    > ridiculous articles

    IIRC... the LHC is almost 17 miles around.. how big is a BEC experiment? How big is an MRI machine?

    I'm still impressed with the low temps achieved.

  25. Re:Note on Kodak Unveils 50MP CCD Image Sensor · · Score: 1

    Don't forget Mr. Nyquist.... even if you are diffraction limited, we (probably) aren't taking pictures of point light sources, but extended objects. Oversampling to some extent is a good thing.