If a school reacts to this by switching from Macs to MS systems, it is clear proof that they don't want their students to become knowledgable about computers. If they were truly trying to educate, why would they switch to what is now the most closed system on the market?
The schools that I have seen switch from Mac to PC switched from Mac Classic and earlier machines to Pentiums. Not really a philosophical shift, as much as moving to hardware that is from the current decade.
That's not to say there is anything wrong woth vintage Macs, but years and years of kids hammering on them is bound to take it's toll.
Given that you have to replace a lab full of machines, they probably said something like "we can get 10 Macs or 20 PCs for the money we have available." What would any administrator do, given that kind of choice?
You could use it to go into small scale manufacturing like this or this or any of these.
$10k is not bad for the main tool for making niche products, say selling 50-100 units/month.
one power plant goes down... then local power starts sucking off of remote plants in order to supply itself, and they go down... which dominoes down the line?
Yeah, that's pretty much it in a nutshell. The system isn't designed with N+1 redundancy. On a high load day there isn't enough surplus capacity in the system to tolerate loosing a source.
Now, would it be possible to just cut off the original station that caused the failure, then start bringing everywhere else (which should still be able to supply for their own demand) back up?
Yup, that's what is happening. I have heard that Ontario's hydro crews are separating from many of the cross-boarder connections in order to allow themto get their own system back up. Once that is done and stable, they will re-intergrate with the larger system.
It will attempt to establish a connection with as many cellsites as the phone's firmware can handle concurrently. I've no idea what this is these days but my old old old siemens s3 had a debug mode and it would track about 5-10 sites at any one time.
Not quite. The phone listens (recieve only) and identifies the base station with the best signal strength, then establishes 2 way communication with that one base station.
The phone monitors the best 10 (IIRC) signals and passes that information to the one site that it is communicating with.
When the phone moves solidly (there is hysteresis involved) into the coverage area of another site it establishes two way communication with that site (and stops talking to the former site). (this is true for GSM. TDMA phones only know about the site they are currently using, the base stations listen for the mobile signal strength of their neighbours)
The problem with this is that the antennas aren't pointed up.
Go here and take a look at the specs on the SRL480, or 488 (which is the omni antenna that my employer uses on almost all rural sites). You'll find that the vertical beamwidth on the 480 is 6 degrees (the 488 is 5). That's +/-3 degrees from horizontal.
Just because it worked on 9/11 dosen't mean that it can be expected to work on planes that are higher,or are travelling across sparsely populated rural areas (Montana, Arizona, Texas...)
Current cell sites use antennas designed with a maximum horizontal beam, and a minimum vertical beam. Translation: the antenna aims the maximum amount of signal sideways (or even a bit down), and minimizes the amount of signal sent up.
The providers could build some sites with antennas having a vertical beam, if they are convinced there's money in it.
The cellular system decided which tower your phone is using at any given moment based on signal strength, and call quality (BER, S/N). Even though several base stations can see your phone with an acceptable quality, your phone will stay on the base station it is currently using until it's signal drops below a threshold, then it will hand off to the best available site.
As phones get further from a base station (I.E. the recieve signal strength at the base station drops) the system instructs the phone to increase it's transmit power, conversly the phone is instructed to reduce it's transmit power as it gets closer to the base station. If there was a micro-cell onboard an aircraft, the phones would be transmitting at their lowest power level, as they will be a few dozen feet from the "base station".
Each phone uses the same amount of system resources if it is 10 feet or 10 miles from the tower.
The above is true of NAMPS, TDMA, and GSM. CDMA is different, and I don't have any hands-on experience with it, so I won't comment on how it would react.
and how do we convince hotel maintenance that we really do need 47,000 amps of 120 VAC
Yout just tell them that's what you want. They'll build it into the bill, whether you use it or not.
Most convention facilities have a few 220v/50a plugs available (AKA stove plug). You should be able to rent a 'distro' from a stage lighting/ sound rental company to access that power. Then you know the coffee machine in the next room isn't sharing your power.
Instead of blasting each building with one big antenna (at a relatively high power) have you thought about running leaky co-ax (AKA radiating cable) in the hallway celings? Depending on the amount of re-bar in the floors, you could probably get away with every 2nd or 3rd floor.
"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will
eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the
Internet, we know this is not true."
BTW, B&O is big on using funky proprietary connectors for everything. The analog connections use 5-pin DIN connectors (???).
Most european audio gear I've seen used DIN connectors. It would seem to be the european (or at least German) standard for connecting audio gear.
Sadly, one of the defining characteristics of such a person would be that they would not be egotistical enough to enter a nation-wide popularity contest. I generally regard anyone who chooses to stand for election to be unelectable on those grounds. This makes voting difficult.
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If a school reacts to this by switching from Macs to MS systems, it is clear proof that they don't want their students to become knowledgable about computers. If they were truly trying to educate, why would they switch to what is now the most closed system on the market?
The schools that I have seen switch from Mac to PC switched from Mac Classic and earlier machines to Pentiums. Not really a philosophical shift, as much as moving to hardware that is from the current decade.
That's not to say there is anything wrong woth vintage Macs, but years and years of kids hammering on them is bound to take it's toll.
Given that you have to replace a lab full of machines, they probably said something like "we can get 10 Macs or 20 PCs for the money we have available."
What would any administrator do, given that kind of choice?
Here is the BitTorrent of TheOpenCD ISO.
Where can we get one of these in Canada (Toronto)?
Or anywhere in Canada, for that matter.
I have never seen Ritz Camera in this country. Are any of the Canadian photography chains carying these under their own name?
A cheap enough to be disposable digital camera could have lots of applications.
Then you don't know how to configure windows.
/. readers do, but that accounts for a negligable percentage of computer users.
I do, and yo do, and probably most of the
Joe 6 pack doesn't even know that you *can* configure Windows, let alone how to do it properly.
You could use it to go into small scale manufacturing like this or this or any of these.
$10k is not bad for the main tool for making niche products, say selling 50-100 units/month.
Well, maybe. But Google can easilly regain any losses my simply making a text-to-speech interface, and have Majel Roddenberry do the voice.
The billboard itself is 52 square meters of LED display.
Well, that puts this to shame.
one power plant goes down... then local power starts sucking off of remote plants in order to supply itself, and they go down... which dominoes down the line?
Yeah, that's pretty much it in a nutshell. The system isn't designed with N+1 redundancy. On a high load day there isn't enough surplus capacity in the system to tolerate loosing a source.
Now, would it be possible to just cut off the original station that caused the failure, then start bringing everywhere else (which should still be able to supply for their own demand) back up?
Yup, that's what is happening. I have heard that Ontario's hydro crews are separating from many of the cross-boarder connections in order to allow themto get their own system back up. Once that is done and stable, they will re-intergrate with the larger system.
that gives us a $72,000. Less mainternance costs, less bandwidth costs, less legal fees, how much is really left over?
$72,000 per year for one product. Do you really think any of these bozos limit themselves to just selling one thing?
That's pretty good money for very little effort (if you don't count all the effort they go to in hiding from reprocussions).
As for the wire cutters, what is it that needs to be cut in a pc?
Old zip ties?
It will attempt to establish a connection with as many cellsites as the phone's firmware can handle concurrently. I've no idea what this is these days but my old old old siemens s3 had a debug mode and it would track about 5-10 sites at any one time.
Not quite.
The phone listens (recieve only) and identifies the base station with the best signal strength, then establishes 2 way communication with that one base station.
The phone monitors the best 10 (IIRC) signals and passes that information to the one site that it is communicating with.
When the phone moves solidly (there is hysteresis involved) into the coverage area of another site it establishes two way communication with that site (and stops talking to the former site).
(this is true for GSM. TDMA phones only know about the site they are currently using, the base stations listen for the mobile signal strength of their neighbours)
The problem with this is that the antennas aren't pointed up.
Go here and take a look at the specs on the SRL480, or 488 (which is the omni antenna that my employer uses on almost all rural sites). You'll find that the vertical beamwidth on the 480 is 6 degrees (the 488 is 5). That's +/-3 degrees from horizontal.
Just because it worked on 9/11 dosen't mean that it can be expected to work on planes that are higher,or are travelling across sparsely populated rural areas (Montana, Arizona, Texas...)
Current cell sites use antennas designed with a maximum horizontal beam, and a minimum vertical beam. Translation: the antenna aims the maximum amount of signal sideways (or even a bit down), and minimizes the amount of signal sent up.
The providers could build some sites with antennas having a vertical beam, if they are convinced there's money in it.
The cellular system decided which tower your phone is using at any given moment based on signal strength, and call quality (BER, S/N). Even though several base stations can see your phone with an acceptable quality, your phone will stay on the base station it is currently using until it's signal drops below a threshold, then it will hand off to the best available site.
As phones get further from a base station (I.E. the recieve signal strength at the base station drops) the system instructs the phone to increase it's transmit power, conversly the phone is instructed to reduce it's transmit power as it gets closer to the base station. If there was a micro-cell onboard an aircraft, the phones would be transmitting at their lowest power level, as they will be a few dozen feet from the "base station".
Each phone uses the same amount of system resources if it is 10 feet or 10 miles from the tower.
The above is true of NAMPS, TDMA, and GSM. CDMA is different, and I don't have any hands-on experience with it, so I won't comment on how it would react.
It's suburban hell with blonde soccer moms in SUVs.
What's wrong with blonde soccer moms?
Specifically model railroading.
Building stuff, basic wiring, painting, logic puzzles, carpentry, photography.... Lots of variety.
and how do we convince hotel maintenance that we really do need 47,000 amps of 120 VAC
Yout just tell them that's what you want. They'll build it into the bill, whether you use it or not.
Most convention facilities have a few 220v/50a plugs available (AKA stove plug). You should be able to rent a 'distro' from a stage lighting/ sound rental company to access that power. Then you know the coffee machine in the next room isn't sharing your power.
completely staged
So what?
Show it at the start of the event, state plainly that that is what will happen to any cheater, no problems.
When I am on a call between 2 (or more) GSM phones, I find many prople reacting to the silence in the lulls with "Hello? Are you still there?"
Dilbert already invented Shock Pants almost 3 years ago.
Instead of blasting each building with one big antenna (at a relatively high power) have you thought about running leaky co-ax (AKA radiating cable) in the hallway celings? Depending on the amount of re-bar in the floors, you could probably get away with every 2nd or 3rd floor.
one manufacturer's product
another
and another (PDF)
*knock* *knock*
/SNL
Yes?
Landshark!
BTW, B&O is big on using funky proprietary connectors for everything. The analog connections use 5-pin DIN connectors (???).
Most european audio gear I've seen used DIN connectors. It would seem to be the european (or at least German) standard for connecting audio gear.
But can you strap it to the head of a frikkin' shark?
Sadly, one of the defining characteristics of such a person would be that they would not be egotistical enough to enter a nation-wide popularity contest. I generally regard anyone who chooses to stand for election to be unelectable on those grounds. This makes voting difficult.
Zaphod Beeblebrox for president?