Re:Fast to create as well
on
Metal Velcro
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· Score: 5, Interesting
It's not a laser at all, but an electron beam. And as for the speed at which an electron beam can be scanned over a square surface, chances are you're staring at a demonstration of this as you read this.
This is the same technology that is used in CRT's, but scaled up a few orders of magnitude in power. And a computer just draws shapes with it, like an old vector graphics screen. Not just commercializable, it's easy to do.
Alright, I'm going to burn my own karma here, but why did *I* get modded +5 and this guy hasn't? He's right on the money!!! He said this far more eloquently than I ever could have hoped. MOD HIM UP!!!
Errr... actually, that's really interesting... I had a chinese girlfriend recently, heh, and the interesting thing is that, while it's not talked about and theres the whole "it'll bring shame on the family if anyone knew" thing... it still happens.
The culture is very averse to talking about sex, but whatever happens behind closed doors...
You are right, though, it's not *quite* as rosy as I first stated.
Check your culture there for a minute. While Iran's view of gay rights is about at that point (like, kill on sight...), CHINA is another story entirely.
While I was in Thailand recently, the current attitudes in most of asia towards gay rights were all over the news... China is a mostly Buddhist country, and except for the noisy protests of the 5% Christian and/or Muslim members, it's going over without much of a fight. They're currently thinking of legalizing same-sex marriage (albeit slower than southeast asia, where it's very likely that we will see laws being passed shortly).
Actually, it's almost certainly based on standard SRAM FPGA technology. It's quite cheap in terms of power, and not especially expensive in terms of time, to reprogram, and there is no degredation over time from doing it too often.
The only real disadvantage is that it might be entirely possible to create on-die shorts with bad programming data, as it currently is in FPGA's.
Funny... I kill the bugs, my g/f does the dishes, I reach the high things, change the lightbulbs, rewire the house, install the home automation system, etc. We share the networking tasks, although she still can configure a Cisco better than I can. We both run heavily customized machines that nobody but us can troubleshoot. Etc etc etc. And we have this rule for printed circuit boards: whoever needs it, etches it.
*winks* Try not to think about it too much, it'll hurt your head.
Actually, such slaughter is REPEATEDLY condoned in the Bible.
Here is a particularly nasty quote:
Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him." (Deuteronomy 13:13-19 NLT)
Actually, I keep a lot of high concentration HCl on hand, and let me tell you... as a defensive weapon, it's *useless*. HCl is probably the safest of the strong acids.
I knew someone who kept constantly spilling the stuff on herself (accident prone). It didn't do very much of anything, caused a small rash. It got to the point where she stopped wearing gloves when dealing with the stuff, because it was so harmless (this is, of course, not reccomended).
Now, if you want nastiness, go with H2SO4 (which will catalytically remove the water from organic tissue) or HF (which will go right through the skin and remove the bones from under it).
In general, a conducting layer like that would be an excellent defence, shunting the current quickly between the two probes. There is no need for a path to earth ground involved at all. While this is high voltage, it is essentially DC, so there is no need for earthing and/or RF grounding.
The best would be if there was an insulating layer under the foil, but it's not even strictly necessary. Electricity follows the path of least resistance.
I hate to nitpick, but Sony makes a profit on the Playstation 2 (they own the chip fabs, the assembly lines, everything, so they can manufacture them very cheaply).
Microsoft, however, is losing money on the XBox, so you have a point there.
Absolutely. A standard microwave-oven-style cavity magnetron with a square waveguide on it can make a HERF that will very effectively knock out electronics. The first to go would be anything with antennas or receiving coils, especially if they are in the same frequency range (802.11 gear would likely be first).
Because these things are so cheap, and because there are several hobby-type people working on them, it wouldn't even need to be *deliberate*. It could simply be accidental leakage of microwave energy.
100 baht sounds a little steep. I saw VCD's going for more like 30-40 when I was there. And this wasn't underground either. I wasn't entirely sure that the products were actually pirate, though, because DVD's were going for only a little more (~120 baht or so).
Still, it's true enough. The government doesn't seem to care at all about foreign copyrights. And these aren't underground operations either. This is all out for public display.
The reason that will fail is simple. Many of the people who would be buying this are also attempting to learn a bit of English.
If you look around the more affluent areas of Bangkok, you see ads for English lessons everywhere, a huge location in The Mall Bangkapi devoted to it, and the like. While the primary language is obviously Thai, English is used often enough, especially in school and business, that it can't be ignored.
An OS that doesn't support english at all would probably be a spectacular flop.
Are you kidding? The Thai version of Windows has a little internationalization icon in the corner that lets you conveniently select between Thai and English.
I was just in Bangkok in December, and was forced to use Windows the whole time:(
Yes, many of us do. Companies like MOSIS will fab silicon cheaply, and for those who are truly poor, Xilinx FPGA's can suffice quite nicely. And designing a chip isn't that difficult. I have an implemenation of a small 32-bit stack-based CPU targetted to a Xilinx FPGA around here somewhere.
I'm currently designing a tiny Single Board Computer (Z80-based) for embedded control applications. Sure, the specs aren't that impressive (a couple MHz, 32K RAM, 512K flash), but that's not the point. The thing is designed to fit on a robot and run on batteries.
Open hardware designs are still about geeky people doing fun things.
I heard about her almost from the start (by doing an Altavista search for 'Jenni', which is a rare enough abbreviation of my name that I wondered who else used it). Within a year or two, most of the people I talked to knew about her, but then her popularity started waning.
It's quite possible that you were simply too young to know about her (as you already established in another thread that you are likely a couple years younger than me).
Watching how quickly and visibly she aged is scary though.. I'm only a little younger than her (although so far, I'm aging much more gracefully *crosses fingers*).
I grew up on ms-dos edit, back when it was still an alias for QBASIC/EDIT (actually, I grew up with BASIC 7 for the C128, but that's another story). And certainly, for newbies, there are easier systems.
I seriously doubt that you can type anywhere near 80WPM on a laptop keyboard. Laptop keyboards, by virtue of design, restrict the maximum typing speed for most people. I'd be lucky if I can get 50WPM on one. Typing faster than that, keyboard effects become very important. I'm *extremely* picky about my keyboards, only using decent buckling-spring versions.
I think what you miss here is the "Ease of Use" vs "Efficiency of Use" tradeoff. Vim is *NOT* easy to use. I would never make the claim that it is. The commands are confusing and I spent the first couple years hating it. However, it's the most efficient editor I ever used.
I used to think that way, until the lack of any decent command-line editors at the time ('98 or '99) drove me to start learning Vim. As I became more comfortable in it, I started using it more.
Flash forward to now. I know the function of every key on the keyboard in command mode, and use most of them instinctively. I can barely use notepad now, because when I want to make a change I instinctively reach for the Esc key. And I'm starting to get really spoiled on syntax coloring (including writing my own syntax files for formats that don't already have them) and folding.
The advantage becomes blatantly obvious when one of my coworkers is hanging arond my desk, and suddenly a massive edit just *happens*, leaving them wondering how (usually this involves macros, since a vim macro is defined by 2 keystrokes and executed by 2 keystrokes, making the fact that I'm creating one almost invisible). When you type at over 80WPM, the time involved with reaching for a mouse starts feeling pretty painful.
Vim is rather like a tall mesa. It's hell to climb, but the view from the top is amazing.
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This is the same technology that is used in CRT's, but scaled up a few orders of magnitude in power. And a computer just draws shapes with it, like an old vector graphics screen. Not just commercializable, it's easy to do.
That's why I use Gentoo. Gentoo is by far the easiest to install Linux that lacks an install program.
Alright, I'm going to burn my own karma here, but why did *I* get modded +5 and this guy hasn't? He's right on the money!!! He said this far more eloquently than I ever could have hoped. MOD HIM UP!!!
Errr... actually, that's really interesting... I had a chinese girlfriend recently, heh, and the interesting thing is that, while it's not talked about and theres the whole "it'll bring shame on the family if anyone knew" thing... it still happens. The culture is very averse to talking about sex, but whatever happens behind closed doors... You are right, though, it's not *quite* as rosy as I first stated.
While I was in Thailand recently, the current attitudes in most of asia towards gay rights were all over the news... China is a mostly Buddhist country, and except for the noisy protests of the 5% Christian and/or Muslim members, it's going over without much of a fight. They're currently thinking of legalizing same-sex marriage (albeit slower than southeast asia, where it's very likely that we will see laws being passed shortly).
Actually, it's almost certainly based on standard SRAM FPGA technology. It's quite cheap in terms of power, and not especially expensive in terms of time, to reprogram, and there is no degredation over time from doing it too often. The only real disadvantage is that it might be entirely possible to create on-die shorts with bad programming data, as it currently is in FPGA's.
(no, this is perfectly on topic, if you read the news...)
*winks* Try not to think about it too much, it'll hurt your head.
Here is a particularly nasty quote:
Hey, I kill spiders and not just can I hook up VCR's, I occasionally repair them. Someone's got to do it. Beware the lesbian geek!
Actually, I was just thinking this was great news for the lesbian geeks. Skip extinct, we'd end up running the place!
I knew someone who kept constantly spilling the stuff on herself (accident prone). It didn't do very much of anything, caused a small rash. It got to the point where she stopped wearing gloves when dealing with the stuff, because it was so harmless (this is, of course, not reccomended).
Now, if you want nastiness, go with H2SO4 (which will catalytically remove the water from organic tissue) or HF (which will go right through the skin and remove the bones from under it).
The best would be if there was an insulating layer under the foil, but it's not even strictly necessary. Electricity follows the path of least resistance.
Microsoft, however, is losing money on the XBox, so you have a point there.
Because these things are so cheap, and because there are several hobby-type people working on them, it wouldn't even need to be *deliberate*. It could simply be accidental leakage of microwave energy.
Still, it's true enough. The government doesn't seem to care at all about foreign copyrights. And these aren't underground operations either. This is all out for public display.
PS. $1US ~= 40 baht.
If you look around the more affluent areas of Bangkok, you see ads for English lessons everywhere, a huge location in The Mall Bangkapi devoted to it, and the like. While the primary language is obviously Thai, English is used often enough, especially in school and business, that it can't be ignored.
An OS that doesn't support english at all would probably be a spectacular flop.
I was just in Bangkok in December, and was forced to use Windows the whole time :(
There is a company that makes shipping trailers called Haulmark. I wonder what the card company has to say about that.
I'm currently designing a tiny Single Board Computer (Z80-based) for embedded control applications. Sure, the specs aren't that impressive (a couple MHz, 32K RAM, 512K flash), but that's not the point. The thing is designed to fit on a robot and run on batteries.
Open hardware designs are still about geeky people doing fun things.
It's quite possible that you were simply too young to know about her (as you already established in another thread that you are likely a couple years younger than me).
Watching how quickly and visibly she aged is scary though.. I'm only a little younger than her (although so far, I'm aging much more gracefully *crosses fingers*).
I seriously doubt that you can type anywhere near 80WPM on a laptop keyboard. Laptop keyboards, by virtue of design, restrict the maximum typing speed for most people. I'd be lucky if I can get 50WPM on one. Typing faster than that, keyboard effects become very important. I'm *extremely* picky about my keyboards, only using decent buckling-spring versions.
I think what you miss here is the "Ease of Use" vs "Efficiency of Use" tradeoff. Vim is *NOT* easy to use. I would never make the claim that it is. The commands are confusing and I spent the first couple years hating it. However, it's the most efficient editor I ever used.
Flash forward to now. I know the function of every key on the keyboard in command mode, and use most of them instinctively. I can barely use notepad now, because when I want to make a change I instinctively reach for the Esc key. And I'm starting to get really spoiled on syntax coloring (including writing my own syntax files for formats that don't already have them) and folding.
The advantage becomes blatantly obvious when one of my coworkers is hanging arond my desk, and suddenly a massive edit just *happens*, leaving them wondering how (usually this involves macros, since a vim macro is defined by 2 keystrokes and executed by 2 keystrokes, making the fact that I'm creating one almost invisible). When you type at over 80WPM, the time involved with reaching for a mouse starts feeling pretty painful.
Vim is rather like a tall mesa. It's hell to climb, but the view from the top is amazing.
I'm posting this right now from inside a twm-managed desktop. Of course, it's a thoroughly customized configuration, but it's still twm.
Actually, in real mode, a Pentium 4 has this same 1024K limitation. Even the Opteron is not immune. Real mode suck.