I rarely come across an ad that looks 'targeted' to me. Amazon does it, but that's based on data they gather on their own site (books I've previously bought), not data they purchased. Otherwise, website ads are IP-based (the Slashdot page I'm looking at now shows an ad specific to my country), or use the search terms I just entered (Google). Ads I get via e-mail are invariably spam, which is as untargeted as it gets. Snail mail isn't targeted either.
So where's all this 'targeted advertising' going on? Companies must be sitting on loads of data that never gets used, if I'm any indication.
If you expect your audience to be non-native speakers, you've got to be very careful with your language. Word play, slang, cultural terms (incl. sports metaphors, for example) are hard to translate and many non-native speakers won't understand what you're saying. This is an issue both when you're supplying just an English manual, and when you get a translator to create a localised version of the manual.
it depends. By all means make it an interesting narrative. But don't expect the user to read the entire manual. Most people will use the manual as a reference, looking up only the section they need. The manual needs to be usable in this case as well.
Puzzles I'd avoid. I had a few textbooks that introduced new concepts using puzzles. Math textbooks were particularly bad in this regard. Left me stumped on more than one occasion, which is bloody annoying.
Humidity, pollution and other things as well as physical access must be controlled.
Pollution is easily taken care of with a filter. Controlling physical access is trivial. Humidity may be a bit more involved, but then again, you're heating the incoming air which reduces its relative humidity. Condensation isn't likely. If it does turn out to be a problem, use a heat exchanger and preheat the incoming air using the exhaust air.
But it is not terribly practicle to plug the plenum passages once a year.
So? Install a valve. The savings should be enough to cover the cost of some extra ducting.
perhaps you should try lifting the mouse and reposition it at the opposite edge of the mousepad when you reach the edge
The problem with that strategy is that the first indication you've reached the edge of the mouse pad is your mouse tilting over and snagging, which is bloody irritating. About 10 years ago, I used a Sun workstation for a while. It had an optical mouse which required a mouse pad (with a grid on it). Despite using that system for about 1.5 years, I never got used to having limits on where I could put the mouse. I now avoid mouse pads like the plague.
That depends on both the mouse and the surface. I've got a Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical that has no tracking problems at all, and a Logitech Optical that does have tracking problems on the same surface. Even then, a $30 mousepad isn't necessary. A sheet of paper works fine. Make it an A3 sheet, and you'll never run off the end of the sheet (the problem I always have with mousepads).
My parents live in an area that has lots of wind turbines. A few years ago, many of these were small, high-rpm turbines that were clearly audible from hundreds of meters away. Sitting in the back yard, you always had this droning noise in the background, this could be very annoying. Things did get better when they started replacing the small turbines with fewer, much larger ones. The turbines closest to their house were removed, and the new turbines ran at much lower rpm which means they produce less noise.
As for sticking solar panels onto the turbine blades: this would make the blades heavier and less efficient. Also, you'd have to add slip rings on the root of each blade, and on the main shaft to transfer the power. Slip rings are expensive, heavy and they need maintenance, especially when you're transferring significant amounts of power through them.
Why does every damned economical car have to _look_ like an economy car?
Ever heard of the Tesla Roadster? Or for that matter the GM EV1, or the Toyota RAV4 EV? The Toyota Prius doesn't look like a "fugly eco-box" either.
if I had something smaller
Well, there's plenty of choice right now. A Mini is small and stylish, a Lotus Elise or a Caterham 7 will go like stink and still do 40 mpg, hell, even my midrange non-ecobox 1.4 ton Accord gets more than 2x the mileage of your F150. Yes, these aren't electric cars, but they'd still complement that F150 nicely and cut your running cost considerably. What's keeping you?
One more reason to park the printer in a separate room behind a closed door. We used to have a printer in our (open-plan) office. The noise and the smell drove me crazy. I managed get the printer banished eventually. I still can't believe what people will subject themselves to, to save having to get up and walk 10m to get their printouts. When you're sitting in an office for 8h/day, any excuse to get up and stretch your legs should be welcome.
Diesel is going to make a bigger impact that hybrids in the coming years.
They already have, in Europe. Diesels account for 50% of car sales in some countries. But diesel isn't without its problems. Governments worry about particulate emissions (and are considering road tax increases to dissuade people from buying diesels).
There's nothing to prevent hybrid systems where the ICE component is a diesel. There isn't one available now, because the European car makers were concentrating on diesels instead (and on catching up with the Japanese in manufacturing efficiency and reliability). They were caught off guard on the whole hybrid idea.
A hybrid drivetrain can be more efficient than is possible with an ICE (petrol or diesel) only.
The next trend that's going to have a big impact is smaller, more efficient petrol engines. We're seeing the first cars come out now where a 2-litre engine has been replaced by a 1.4 with a turbocharger, with the same max. power output while using less fuel and better emissions figures.
The notion of not having a showroom sort of makes sense, but the savings will be limited. After all, they're going to have to set up that car-sharing franchise instead, and that franchise will have to employ someone who can talk to prospective owners, and they'll have to vehicle available, which may mean investing in a demo car.
Also, where will these vehicles be maintained? Independent garages aren't usually the first to invest in new equipment and training to service unusual cars (e.g. handling high-voltage equipment and large batteries that can discharge at 1000 A).
I expect these cars will need less maintenance than internal combustion vehicles, though. I just had my car in for its 15 Mm checkup, and of the E 370 bill, maybe E 40 was for items unrelated to the engine (an interior filter and balancing two tires IIRC). This means routine stuff could be handled by any garage (or tire fitter, for that matter). It's just the high-voltage electric stuff that needs a specialist.
An annoying side-effect of all the electronics in current cars is that it's become impossible to replace the sound system (or at least the head unit): all too often, the head unit is linked to the satnav display, and on more expensive cars, the stereo is a main interface element for the entire car (BMW iDrive and similar systems). Also, the HU is built into the dashboard, instead of being in a DIN slot. This means you're stuck with the limited quality and features of the headunit, and adding things like an amplifier, CD changer, MP3 player and extra speakers (e.g. a subwoofer) are hard or impossible.
With a standard OS, it should be possible to separate the head unit from the rest of the car, and still use the HU to interface with the car.
350Z's "don't have any performance"? That's a 1500kg car with more than 300 bhp. The 1969 Trans Am had 320 bhp (according to the specs, anyway). Can't find its weight ATM, but it's bound to be nearer 2 tons than 1500 kg. Later versions had even lower power output.
why not do it properly and use modern underpinnings, instead of the crappy engine and gearbox of the original? ISTR the suspension wasn't any good either, so change that as well. The shape may be iconic, but a good car, it wasn't.
Tiny wheels? On the first-generation Prius yes, but the current model has normal-sized 195/55R16 wheels. The first generation had 175/65R14, and they looked even smaller because the body was relatively high (so they could fit the batteries underneath the back seat and boot).
Toyota created a new design for its hybrid for two reasons: 1. the "look at me, I'm driving a hybrid" factor 2. so they could fit the batteries, and still have a vehicle that's reasonably compact yet large enough for five people and their luggage.
Honda chose a different route: they fit the hybrid system in an existing vehicle (the Civic). They used a smaller, less powerful electric motor, and a smaller battery pack.
I've recharged friends' iPods on my computer (which is obviously not authorized for that iPod). If that were to result in bricking the iPod, I'd be pissed.
Unbricking the iPod when it's connected to an authorized computer would mitigate, but not solve, the problem.
IMO there's nothing wrong with sending tapes home with people. You could set up a round robin, with tapes from building A being stored in building B, but that's not inherently more secure than someone having the tapes at home. You're going to have to set up some sort of secure storage anyway. Leaving the tapes in a car overnight is stupid, though.
The biggest problem with moving tapes around is that you have to make sure they're not moved in a car with a great big stereo. Subwoofers can play havoc on magnetic media.
Both the complete report and the abstract are available here.
I can't help but note the report is very badly written. The writers' habit of stuffing loads of numerical data into sentences, instead of in a table, is annoying. The tables at the back use incomprehensible labels. And why do people still generate PDFs that completely lack navigation aids (hyperlinks, bookmarks)?
How's that? Do they honestly think they can build a wireless network with sufficient capacity for an entire city? Presumably, they want to replace local T-1 connections (from the telecom exchange to customers) with WLAN. But with the limited number of channels available, they'll run out of bandwidth in no time (esp. near the exchange).
Re:Shortage of buttons makes iPod difficult to use
on
Steve Jobs Hates Buttons
·
· Score: 2, Informative
But having no separate volume control really harms the usability of the device. While I'm listening to music, I don't want to have to look at the screen.
And you don't. The default function of the click wheel is to change the volume. No looking necessary. Also, the click wheel offers much better control over the volume setting than +/- buttons would. With the click wheel, I can pretty much instantly set the correct volume for a song, unlike +/- buttons (see my other post in this discussion)
Want to select a song and start playing it in a fresh on-the-go playlist and, while it's playing, add more songs to the queue? Navigate down to select the song, up to the root, down to play from the playlist, back up to the root, back down to select your next song.
Why go back to the root between songs? You can just keep selecting songs from any playlist to add to the On-the-Go list.
I'm looking at the manual for the SRU 9600 at the moment. By default, the rotary control is not used to change the volume, but to select menu items etc. The remote is programmable, but the manual doesn't say if you can change the function of the rotary control.
Slashdot Mirror
There was no kaboom! There is supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
I rarely come across an ad that looks 'targeted' to me. Amazon does it, but that's based on data they gather on their own site (books I've previously bought), not data they purchased. Otherwise, website ads are IP-based (the Slashdot page I'm looking at now shows an ad specific to my country), or use the search terms I just entered (Google).
Ads I get via e-mail are invariably spam, which is as untargeted as it gets. Snail mail isn't targeted either.
So where's all this 'targeted advertising' going on? Companies must be sitting on loads of data that never gets used, if I'm any indication.
If you expect your audience to be non-native speakers, you've got to be very careful with your language. Word play, slang, cultural terms (incl. sports metaphors, for example) are hard to translate and many non-native speakers won't understand what you're saying. This is an issue both when you're supplying just an English manual, and when you get a translator to create a localised version of the manual.
it depends. By all means make it an interesting narrative. But don't expect the user to read the entire manual. Most people will use the manual as a reference, looking up only the section they need. The manual needs to be usable in this case as well.
Puzzles I'd avoid. I had a few textbooks that introduced new concepts using puzzles. Math textbooks were particularly bad in this regard. Left me stumped on more than one occasion, which is bloody annoying.
Humidity, pollution and other things as well as physical access must be controlled.
Pollution is easily taken care of with a filter. Controlling physical access is trivial. Humidity may be a bit more involved, but then again, you're heating the incoming air which reduces its relative humidity. Condensation isn't likely. If it does turn out to be a problem, use a heat exchanger and preheat the incoming air using the exhaust air.
But it is not terribly practicle to plug the plenum passages once a year.
So? Install a valve. The savings should be enough to cover the cost of some extra ducting.
Maybe there's an impact every 62 million years after all. I hereby posit that Earth is one of spheres in a giant Newton's Cradle
perhaps you should try lifting the mouse and reposition it at the opposite edge of the mousepad when you reach the edge
The problem with that strategy is that the first indication you've reached the edge of the mouse pad is your mouse tilting over and snagging, which is bloody irritating. About 10 years ago, I used a Sun workstation for a while. It had an optical mouse which required a mouse pad (with a grid on it). Despite using that system for about 1.5 years, I never got used to having limits on where I could put the mouse. I now avoid mouse pads like the plague.
That depends on both the mouse and the surface. I've got a Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical that has no tracking problems at all, and a Logitech Optical that does have tracking problems on the same surface. Even then, a $30 mousepad isn't necessary. A sheet of paper works fine. Make it an A3 sheet, and you'll never run off the end of the sheet (the problem I always have with mousepads).
My parents live in an area that has lots of wind turbines. A few years ago, many of these were small, high-rpm turbines that were clearly audible from hundreds of meters away. Sitting in the back yard, you always had this droning noise in the background, this could be very annoying.
Things did get better when they started replacing the small turbines with fewer, much larger ones. The turbines closest to their house were removed, and the new turbines ran at much lower rpm which means they produce less noise.
As for sticking solar panels onto the turbine blades: this would make the blades heavier and less efficient. Also, you'd have to add slip rings on the root of each blade, and on the main shaft to transfer the power.
Slip rings are expensive, heavy and they need maintenance, especially when you're transferring significant amounts of power through them.
Why does every damned economical car have to _look_ like an economy car?
Ever heard of the Tesla Roadster? Or for that matter the GM EV1, or the Toyota RAV4 EV? The Toyota Prius doesn't look like a "fugly eco-box" either.
if I had something smaller
Well, there's plenty of choice right now. A Mini is small and stylish, a Lotus Elise or a Caterham 7 will go like stink and still do 40 mpg, hell, even my midrange non-ecobox 1.4 ton Accord gets more than 2x the mileage of your F150. Yes, these aren't electric cars, but they'd still complement that F150 nicely and cut your running cost considerably. What's keeping you?
One more reason to park the printer in a separate room behind a closed door. We used to have a printer in our (open-plan) office. The noise and the smell drove me crazy. I managed get the printer banished eventually. I still can't believe what people will subject themselves to, to save having to get up and walk 10m to get their printouts. When you're sitting in an office for 8h/day, any excuse to get up and stretch your legs should be welcome.
Diesel is going to make a bigger impact that hybrids in the coming years.
They already have, in Europe. Diesels account for 50% of car sales in some countries. But diesel isn't without its problems. Governments worry about particulate emissions (and are considering road tax increases to dissuade people from buying diesels).
There's nothing to prevent hybrid systems where the ICE component is a diesel. There isn't one available now, because the European car makers were concentrating on diesels instead (and on catching up with the Japanese in manufacturing efficiency and reliability). They were caught off guard on the whole hybrid idea.
A hybrid drivetrain can be more efficient than is possible with an ICE (petrol or diesel) only.
The next trend that's going to have a big impact is smaller, more efficient petrol engines. We're seeing the first cars come out now where a 2-litre engine has been replaced by a 1.4 with a turbocharger, with the same max. power output while using less fuel and better emissions figures.
The notion of not having a showroom sort of makes sense, but the savings will be limited. After all, they're going to have to set up that car-sharing franchise instead, and that franchise will have to employ someone who can talk to prospective owners, and they'll have to vehicle available, which may mean investing in a demo car.
Also, where will these vehicles be maintained? Independent garages aren't usually the first to invest in new equipment and training to service unusual cars (e.g. handling high-voltage equipment and large batteries that can discharge at 1000 A).
I expect these cars will need less maintenance than internal combustion vehicles, though. I just had my car in for its 15 Mm checkup, and of the E 370 bill, maybe E 40 was for items unrelated to the engine (an interior filter and balancing two tires IIRC). This means routine stuff could be handled by any garage (or tire fitter, for that matter). It's just the high-voltage electric stuff that needs a specialist.
An annoying side-effect of all the electronics in current cars is that it's become impossible to replace the sound system (or at least the head unit): all too often, the head unit is linked to the satnav display, and on more expensive cars, the stereo is a main interface element for the entire car (BMW iDrive and similar systems). Also, the HU is built into the dashboard, instead of being in a DIN slot.
This means you're stuck with the limited quality and features of the headunit, and adding things like an amplifier, CD changer, MP3 player and extra speakers (e.g. a subwoofer) are hard or impossible.
With a standard OS, it should be possible to separate the head unit from the rest of the car, and still use the HU to interface with the car.
350Z's "don't have any performance"? That's a 1500kg car with more than 300 bhp.
The 1969 Trans Am had 320 bhp (according to the specs, anyway). Can't find its weight ATM, but it's bound to be nearer 2 tons than 1500 kg. Later versions had even lower power output.
why not do it properly and use modern underpinnings, instead of the crappy engine and gearbox of the original? ISTR the suspension wasn't any good either, so change that as well. The shape may be iconic, but a good car, it wasn't.
will never be the same again...
Tiny wheels? On the first-generation Prius yes, but the current model has normal-sized 195/55R16 wheels. The first generation had 175/65R14, and they looked even smaller because the body was relatively high (so they could fit the batteries underneath the back seat and boot).
Toyota created a new design for its hybrid for two reasons:
1. the "look at me, I'm driving a hybrid" factor
2. so they could fit the batteries, and still have a vehicle that's reasonably compact yet large enough for five people and their luggage.
Honda chose a different route: they fit the hybrid system in an existing vehicle (the Civic). They used a smaller, less powerful electric motor, and a smaller battery pack.
I've recharged friends' iPods on my computer (which is obviously not authorized for that iPod). If that were to result in bricking the iPod, I'd be pissed.
Unbricking the iPod when it's connected to an authorized computer would mitigate, but not solve, the problem.
IMO there's nothing wrong with sending tapes home with people. You could set up a round robin, with tapes from building A being stored in building B, but that's not inherently more secure than someone having the tapes at home. You're going to have to set up some sort of secure storage anyway.
Leaving the tapes in a car overnight is stupid, though.
The biggest problem with moving tapes around is that you have to make sure they're not moved in a car with a great big stereo. Subwoofers can play havoc on magnetic media.
Why have one standard when you can have two instead! This strategy has worked so well in the past...
Both the complete report and the abstract are available here.
I can't help but note the report is very badly written. The writers' habit of stuffing loads of numerical data into sentences, instead of in a table, is annoying. The tables at the back use incomprehensible labels. And why do people still generate PDFs that completely lack navigation aids (hyperlinks, bookmarks)?
Wireless allows the City to save on ... T-1 lines,
How's that? Do they honestly think they can build a wireless network with sufficient capacity for an entire city? Presumably, they want to replace local T-1 connections (from the telecom exchange to customers) with WLAN. But with the limited number of channels available, they'll run out of bandwidth in no time (esp. near the exchange).
But having no separate volume control really harms the usability of the device. While I'm listening to music, I don't want to have to look at the screen.
And you don't. The default function of the click wheel is to change the volume. No looking necessary. Also, the click wheel offers much better control over the volume setting than +/- buttons would. With the click wheel, I can pretty much instantly set the correct volume for a song, unlike +/- buttons (see my other post in this discussion)
Want to select a song and start playing it in a fresh on-the-go playlist and, while it's playing, add more songs to the queue? Navigate down to select the song, up to the root, down to play from the playlist, back up to the root, back down to select your next song.
Why go back to the root between songs? You can just keep selecting songs from any playlist to add to the On-the-Go list.
(yeah, I know, replying to my own post)
I'm looking at the manual for the SRU 9600 at the moment. By default, the rotary control is not used to change the volume, but to select menu items etc. The remote is programmable, but the manual doesn't say if you can change the function of the rotary control.