Accident: PC in a body cast explains how his laptop got injured when someone tripped over his power cord. Mac points out new Apple notebooks have a magnetic quick release power cord.
This is a problem which might happen to only the most careless of people. Realistically, no one trips over laptop power cords, or plugs them in where people are walking through. Fake.
FALSE. Last week I fixed three PCs that required us to remove the shattered jack off the motherboard and solder on a cord because parts were not reasonable. (replace entire motherboard) I've replaced several dozen DC-in ports on macs, most of the non magsafes were on their own independent board. That's a $25 part vs a $450 part. I have seen a few people manage to damage a magsafe by tripping on it at a 90deg angle from the machine but that was the cord (adapter) not the computer, and the computer didn't come flying off the table.
Breakthrough: Mac and a counselor try to explain to PC that some of his Vista hardware compatibility issues are caused by having many different manufacturers and this is not his fault.
A problem, true, but just as much of a problem for Macs. Both are brought on by vendors not writing proper drivers for their hardware, so Apple looks just a bit asinine acting like they'd be immune to this.
Not immune for sure, but much less susceptible. I'd toss out a rough estimate that the percentage (yes I said percentage, not number) of software that didn't work on Vista at launch was eight times that of Leopard.
Choose a Vista: PC is confused about which of the 6 versions of Vista he should pick and has to use a wheel.
Fake problem. Does anyone actually go to the store and buy a boxed copy of Windows, anyway? Even if they do, they'll do one of three things: pick home cause they're a home user, pick ultimate cause it says "ultimate", or, most likely, ask a store employee.
Not sure which way I'd answer that. We actually see about 15% of the PCs in here for repair that don't have the bundled OS on them. (and in most cases it's not a legit copy, most of them are trying to escape the "media center edition" restrictions)
Computer Cart: Various PCs are plagued with cryptic error messages like "Fatal Error" and error "692".
Real-ish problem. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, though: it's been a few years since I worked on Macs as part of my job, but I saw far more cryptic error messages there than I ever did with Windows. For instance, not once on Windows have I seen "Error xxxx", but that was pretty much the only error I ever saw from Mac OS.
Both platforms have cryptic error messages. They're about on par with each other for understandability. The difference here I think is the frequency you encounter them. Mac can only boast about 1/2 the frequency though and I'd like to see that worked on.
Security: A bodyguard constantly asks PC to authorize every action he takes. References UAC.
This is the only real problem. It is damned annoying, too. Hopefully Microsoft gets it right in Windows 7, or people will just turn it off again.
Won't happen. Security was supposed to improve and become more transparent with vista. See how that went?
Surgery: PC explains he might need some surgery (upgrades) in order to run Vista and is worried about it.
Occasionally, spyware is an issue on Windows through no fault of the user. The vast majority of the time, it's because the user feels some ungodly need to click on every pop-up they see, and download those "free emoticon omg" packs (and I remind you, those "free emoticon omg" packs would work quite nicely independent of OS). Mostly fake.
You can't fix that behavior in the user, you'll get that on any platform. How the system protects the user from their own recklessness is the difference. A LOT of the blame here is actually on the
or they were waiting for pystar to dig their hole deep enough to insure a victory for Apple. If pystar was surprised by what they got away with, that may have encouraged them to continue to push the envelope, and stagger farther and farther across the line of laws - making them a much easier catch.
Like the old saying of giving someone enough rope to hang themselves with.
Potting compound was a blank gunk you applied to electronics you didn't want people to tamper with
They weren't so much worried about tampering as they were about reverse-engineering. Nowadays they have a different process they use on chips for cable boxes, which we saw an article here awhile ago on.
it's a little more important if you forget it, and thankfully it's also a little harder forget.
I've forgotten my computer at work only once, and of course it had to be on a Friday night. That was very annoying. OTOH I've never forgotten my computer at home, but did have to endure a week of time while it was in the shop getting repaired. Pulled the HD before sending it in and had that in a little fw carrier, so could just boot a host machine off it and be right at home.
I assume sites like http://www.cellswapper.com/ etc are totally flooded with people wanting out of their AT&T contracts for their new iPhones. Or is there a site where AT&T contracts like that are actually in demand?
A French judge ordered eBay to pay Louis Vuitton handbag manufacturer LVMH (LVMH.PA) $61 million in damages. In doing so, the judge rejected eBay's argument that it is not responsible for illegal items sold by users because it provides tools to request removal of infringing goods and takes them down once notified.
Sounds like eBay was trying to work on the same level as the DMCA crap, where as long as they offer the tools to get things removed (takedown notices) and don't try to police it themselves, it's a bit network-neutralics/safe harbor/etc. Either let it police itself and be held harmless, or police it yourself but don't screw up because you're now responsible.
Sounds like they want it both ways now? Police it yourself and miss one, lawsuit. Let them police it and issue takedowns, lawsuit. Just lovely. Doesn't leave them with much for options eh? But then I suppose the plaintifs would just suggest "you could always close your business". That's probably their end goal. eBay is bad for business in those markets, and there's no 'fix" for that besides getting rid of eBay.
Gets us back to the idea that if you have an outdated business model that doesn't work in today's world, you can either adapt, or try to warp the world to operate in a way you can still make a profit the old way. And of course we know what they always seem to pick... hah, silly picture enters my mind, a bunch of dinosaurs gathering wood to start fires, to combat the oncoming ice age.
I thought the article was talking about using DC power instead of AC, to help maintain the superconductivity? DC would not produce radio waves. They're placing these lines underground though so the point is moot.
Anyway, ideal superconductors don't have any voltage drop. No voltage drop means no resistance, which means no power consumed. No power consumed means it can't radiate power in the form of radio waves. Conservation of energy at work.
If you are running AC, and have a resonant coil nearby, yes you can induce an inductive load on the lines and develop a current on your coil where you can tap energy. Same thing happens in a transformer, and this uses magnetic coupling. Since magnetic force decreases with the square of the distance, and since you can' get very close to the line, your ability to harvest energy is pretty limited. I've seen people make an interesting demo of raising a fluorescent bulb in the air above them, holding onto one of the ends and with grounded shoes, and get the light to light up a little. That demonstrates what you're talking about.
TFA does mention that using AC in the lines would cause coupling with nearby objects and could result in power loss, and that's part of the case they were making against using AC in the lines.
resistance produces a CHANGE in voltage between its two ends. If you have no resistance, then the voltage on the other end of the wire is the same as on the first end. "the resulting voltage V across the sample", they mean the difference in voltage from end to end.
This is also called "voltage drop". If a conductor's voltage drop is zero, then it has zero resistance. This is of course you are running a current through it. Because if "i" (current) is zero, then everything else is going to be zero also. e=i*r, (voltage=current x resistance) so r=e/i. Not possible to measure when i=0. This is why a nonzero current is required for the test.
Further, when current passes across a conductor (or a load, or whatever) it can dump some of its power. The more resistance in the load or conductor, higher the voltage drop. The higher the voltage drop, the more power is eaten up. If two loads are put in series, and you can reduce one load to zero resistance, the other load takes on the entire available voltage drop, and therefore you deliver 100% of your power to the load you want to be using the power. (the power grid)
Superconducting transmission lines have almost zero resistance and should require less cooling once they reach working temperature.
tho isn't it more of an insulating challenge to keep a line at 65K rather than 20c? The larger the temperature difference gets, (between the line and the ground it's in) the more work it is to maintain it.
The flipside you are seeing is the amount of heat the lines generate inside the tube. Which for these lines will certainly be less. But you still have to deal with the dirt around you trying to warm up the line.
kind of the same boat for me. Some of the things I am the most proud of are so dated that no one would care about them anymore. The little hacks you do at home can't compete with anything you'll ever do at work.
I always enjoyed doing things that on the onset seemed impossible, particularly if I was TOLD they were impossible, even if there wasn't a practical value to it. It's all about the challenge isn't it?
being able to properly translate anything large to brainfuck will either guarantee you the job, or get you tossed out of the office by the interviewer, depending on the job.
most BT servers run their web server on port 80, and they always encourage users to change the default BT port to something else. As long as you offer legitimate torrents, and run https encrypted to prevent people from seeing what torrents you download, then all you know is they are running BT on a torrent on the server. If you are using encrypted BT, they can't see what it is you're downloading when you start up the torrent. Beyond knowing they're running BT, (which is still legal, for now) there's nothing more you have on them.
The specs on the two cameras, however, show the lower-resolution version to be faster: 1.4 seconds per capture for the H3DII-39 over 1.1 seconds for the H3DII-50. That could simply be implementation-specific, though.
Indeed, 1.4 seconds is a very long time to not move. Only useful for objects and scenery, certainly not going to do people or wildlife.
I mean really I have a 6mpix camera and have never been lacking for resolution. It's got a 12x optical zoom (powershot s3 is) so I don't need resolution to make up for magnification either.
I wonder how big the market is for people that really NEED that much resolution?
And I wonder how many people's computers will absolutely CRY when trying to open a 50mpix tiff. My 6mpix jpegs are 2.5-3.5mb. (the tiffs are 15-16mb iirc) at 50mpix, 29mb would make for a terribly large and unwieldy jpeg.
But then there will be those that just want the biggest there is. And I need someone to drive the SD card prices down for me, so go for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Accident: PC in a body cast explains how his laptop got injured when someone tripped over his power cord. Mac points out new Apple notebooks have a magnetic quick release power cord.
This is a problem which might happen to only the most careless of people. Realistically, no one trips over laptop power cords, or plugs them in where people are walking through. Fake.
FALSE. Last week I fixed three PCs that required us to remove the shattered jack off the motherboard and solder on a cord because parts were not reasonable. (replace entire motherboard) I've replaced several dozen DC-in ports on macs, most of the non magsafes were on their own independent board. That's a $25 part vs a $450 part. I have seen a few people manage to damage a magsafe by tripping on it at a 90deg angle from the machine but that was the cord (adapter) not the computer, and the computer didn't come flying off the table.
Breakthrough: Mac and a counselor try to explain to PC that some of his Vista hardware compatibility issues are caused by having many different manufacturers and this is not his fault.
A problem, true, but just as much of a problem for Macs. Both are brought on by vendors not writing proper drivers for their hardware, so Apple looks just a bit asinine acting like they'd be immune to this.
Not immune for sure, but much less susceptible. I'd toss out a rough estimate that the percentage (yes I said percentage, not number) of software that didn't work on Vista at launch was eight times that of Leopard.
Choose a Vista: PC is confused about which of the 6 versions of Vista he should pick and has to use a wheel.
Fake problem. Does anyone actually go to the store and buy a boxed copy of Windows, anyway? Even if they do, they'll do one of three things: pick home cause they're a home user, pick ultimate cause it says "ultimate", or, most likely, ask a store employee.
Not sure which way I'd answer that. We actually see about 15% of the PCs in here for repair that don't have the bundled OS on them. (and in most cases it's not a legit copy, most of them are trying to escape the "media center edition" restrictions)
Computer Cart: Various PCs are plagued with cryptic error messages like "Fatal Error" and error "692".
Real-ish problem. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, though: it's been a few years since I worked on Macs as part of my job, but I saw far more cryptic error messages there than I ever did with Windows. For instance, not once on Windows have I seen "Error xxxx", but that was pretty much the only error I ever saw from Mac OS.
Both platforms have cryptic error messages. They're about on par with each other for understandability. The difference here I think is the frequency you encounter them. Mac can only boast about 1/2 the frequency though and I'd like to see that worked on.
Security: A bodyguard constantly asks PC to authorize every action he takes. References UAC.
This is the only real problem. It is damned annoying, too. Hopefully Microsoft gets it right in Windows 7, or people will just turn it off again.
Won't happen. Security was supposed to improve and become more transparent with vista. See how that went?
Surgery: PC explains he might need some surgery (upgrades) in order to run Vista and is worried about it.
Occasionally, spyware is an issue on Windows through no fault of the user. The vast majority of the time, it's because the user feels some ungodly need to click on every pop-up they see, and download those "free emoticon omg" packs (and I remind you, those "free emoticon omg" packs would work quite nicely independent of OS). Mostly fake.
You can't fix that behavior in the user, you'll get that on any platform. How the system protects the user from their own recklessness is the difference. A LOT of the blame here is actually on the
or they were waiting for pystar to dig their hole deep enough to insure a victory for Apple. If pystar was surprised by what they got away with, that may have encouraged them to continue to push the envelope, and stagger farther and farther across the line of laws - making them a much easier catch.
Like the old saying of giving someone enough rope to hang themselves with.
but if you drop them enough don't all the bits fall out?
Potting compound was a blank gunk you applied to electronics you didn't want people to tamper with
They weren't so much worried about tampering as they were about reverse-engineering. Nowadays they have a different process they use on chips for cable boxes, which we saw an article here awhile ago on.
it's a little more important if you forget it, and thankfully it's also a little harder forget.
I've forgotten my computer at work only once, and of course it had to be on a Friday night. That was very annoying. OTOH I've never forgotten my computer at home, but did have to endure a week of time while it was in the shop getting repaired. Pulled the HD before sending it in and had that in a little fw carrier, so could just boot a host machine off it and be right at home.
I assume sites like http://www.cellswapper.com/ etc are totally flooded with people wanting out of their AT&T contracts for their new iPhones. Or is there a site where AT&T contracts like that are actually in demand?
A French judge ordered eBay to pay Louis Vuitton handbag manufacturer LVMH (LVMH.PA) $61 million in damages. In doing so, the judge rejected eBay's argument that it is not responsible for illegal items sold by users because it provides tools to request removal of infringing goods and takes them down once notified.
Sounds like eBay was trying to work on the same level as the DMCA crap, where as long as they offer the tools to get things removed (takedown notices) and don't try to police it themselves, it's a bit network-neutralics/safe harbor/etc. Either let it police itself and be held harmless, or police it yourself but don't screw up because you're now responsible.
Sounds like they want it both ways now? Police it yourself and miss one, lawsuit. Let them police it and issue takedowns, lawsuit. Just lovely. Doesn't leave them with much for options eh? But then I suppose the plaintifs would just suggest "you could always close your business". That's probably their end goal. eBay is bad for business in those markets, and there's no 'fix" for that besides getting rid of eBay.
Gets us back to the idea that if you have an outdated business model that doesn't work in today's world, you can either adapt, or try to warp the world to operate in a way you can still make a profit the old way. And of course we know what they always seem to pick... hah, silly picture enters my mind, a bunch of dinosaurs gathering wood to start fires, to combat the oncoming ice age.
The law is increasingly siding with rights owners."
And he who has the bucks tends to be the owner.
Nothing new here?
Yes, but heretics get burned at the stake :(
and vegitarians get burned at the steak.
(except iPhones)
I just tried adding to my list but he's not line.
I thought the article was talking about using DC power instead of AC, to help maintain the superconductivity? DC would not produce radio waves. They're placing these lines underground though so the point is moot.
Anyway, ideal superconductors don't have any voltage drop. No voltage drop means no resistance, which means no power consumed. No power consumed means it can't radiate power in the form of radio waves. Conservation of energy at work.
If you are running AC, and have a resonant coil nearby, yes you can induce an inductive load on the lines and develop a current on your coil where you can tap energy. Same thing happens in a transformer, and this uses magnetic coupling. Since magnetic force decreases with the square of the distance, and since you can' get very close to the line, your ability to harvest energy is pretty limited. I've seen people make an interesting demo of raising a fluorescent bulb in the air above them, holding onto one of the ends and with grounded shoes, and get the light to light up a little. That demonstrates what you're talking about.
TFA does mention that using AC in the lines would cause coupling with nearby objects and could result in power loss, and that's part of the case they were making against using AC in the lines.
resistance produces a CHANGE in voltage between its two ends. If you have no resistance, then the voltage on the other end of the wire is the same as on the first end. "the resulting voltage V across the sample", they mean the difference in voltage from end to end.
This is also called "voltage drop". If a conductor's voltage drop is zero, then it has zero resistance. This is of course you are running a current through it. Because if "i" (current) is zero, then everything else is going to be zero also. e=i*r, (voltage=current x resistance) so r=e/i. Not possible to measure when i=0. This is why a nonzero current is required for the test.
Further, when current passes across a conductor (or a load, or whatever) it can dump some of its power. The more resistance in the load or conductor, higher the voltage drop. The higher the voltage drop, the more power is eaten up. If two loads are put in series, and you can reduce one load to zero resistance, the other load takes on the entire available voltage drop, and therefore you deliver 100% of your power to the load you want to be using the power. (the power grid)
Superconducting transmission lines have almost zero resistance and should require less cooling once they reach working temperature.
tho isn't it more of an insulating challenge to keep a line at 65K rather than 20c? The larger the temperature difference gets, (between the line and the ground it's in) the more work it is to maintain it.
The flipside you are seeing is the amount of heat the lines generate inside the tube. Which for these lines will certainly be less. But you still have to deal with the dirt around you trying to warm up the line.
kind of the same boat for me. Some of the things I am the most proud of are so dated that no one would care about them anymore. The little hacks you do at home can't compete with anything you'll ever do at work.
I always enjoyed doing things that on the onset seemed impossible, particularly if I was TOLD they were impossible, even if there wasn't a practical value to it. It's all about the challenge isn't it?
being able to direct them to a search on a repository and start pulling up your code all over the place definitely looks good.
being able to properly translate anything large to brainfuck will either guarantee you the job, or get you tossed out of the office by the interviewer, depending on the job.
most BT servers run their web server on port 80, and they always encourage users to change the default BT port to something else. As long as you offer legitimate torrents, and run https encrypted to prevent people from seeing what torrents you download, then all you know is they are running BT on a torrent on the server. If you are using encrypted BT, they can't see what it is you're downloading when you start up the torrent. Beyond knowing they're running BT, (which is still legal, for now) there's nothing more you have on them.
If the package manager simply refused to use metadata signed more than say, 3 months ago, wouldn't this help?
finally I'll get praised for my spawn camping!
You just voted for them? You're going about it all wrong. You need to give them large campaign contributions. (bribes)
Get with the times, and always keep in mind, you're in America.
Shareware shows that sometimes you can get people to pay more for free software than for pay software.
I'm quite happy to have shelled out more this year for shareware than retailware.
Can they legally sell ubuntu, or is it a charge for pre-installation, or just a very expensive cd? Or does it come with support?
from cnet we have:
The specs on the two cameras, however, show the lower-resolution version to be faster: 1.4 seconds per capture for the H3DII-39 over 1.1 seconds for the H3DII-50. That could simply be implementation-specific, though.
Indeed, 1.4 seconds is a very long time to not move. Only useful for objects and scenery, certainly not going to do people or wildlife.
I mean really I have a 6mpix camera and have never been lacking for resolution. It's got a 12x optical zoom (powershot s3 is) so I don't need resolution to make up for magnification either.
I wonder how big the market is for people that really NEED that much resolution?
And I wonder how many people's computers will absolutely CRY when trying to open a 50mpix tiff. My 6mpix jpegs are 2.5-3.5mb. (the tiffs are 15-16mb iirc) at 50mpix, 29mb would make for a terribly large and unwieldy jpeg.
But then there will be those that just want the biggest there is. And I need someone to drive the SD card prices down for me, so go for it.