But that doesn't seem to be a solution to the problem: If you press Shift-E, the light doesn't reach the finger that presses the Shift key. So how does the software know it has been pressed?
Also, Shift isn't the only key that can have this problem. All the modifier keys can.
if your worried about SUV to compact crash severity perhaps we should ban the crappy tuna can cars (like my Civic) ; afterall, SUVs are not new and aren't going away
Nonsense. Compacts aren't going away any more than SUVs are. In fact, banning SUVs would have a better effect on safety than banning compacts, and there would be other benefits, too (environmental - less use of resources, and congestion-wise: smaller cars take up less space).
Lastly, how the Hell can you claim SuVs cause accidents?
I claim that when a crash occurs between an SUV and a car, there's a higher probability one of the people involved in the crash dies, than when two cars collide. An SUV hitting a pedestrian is also more likely to result in the pedestrian dying than a normal car hitting that pedestrian would.
Only now are these issues beginning to be addressed. Typically, not by the established SUV makers (read: Detroit), but by newcomers (Honda: pedestrians, and Volvo: overrun protection).
For me, it's the other way round: Why bother filling the phone's address book when I routinely use 5-6 phones (2 at home, several offices) in the course of a week? It's a PITA to keep updating/synchronizing all that data. I keep my phone info in just one place: my Palmpilot.
Also, phones connected to landlines seem to lag behind cellphones in this area: of those 6, only one has an address book with more than 10 slots. This has a lot to do with the fact that landphones have a much longer life than cellphones.
One big factor is the way numbers are allocated. For historical reasons, numbers are grouped: every number with an XYZ prefex gets routed to the XYZ exchange. Once you placed an exchange somewhere, it had 10^5 phone numbers available, whether it needed them or not. I think you'll still find a lot of prefixes that haven't been filled yet.
A similar thing happens when netblocks are given to companies. If a company needs 1500 phone lines, 10,000 numbers are reserved (think about it as applying a decimal netmask).
Now that phone exchanges are mostly digital (over here, the last analog exchange was phased out years ago, IDK about the US, though), it should be possible to free up those unused numbers.
There are more reasons: at least over here, many numbers are 'locked away' in unused 'prepaid' SIM cards for cellphones. In the US, I expect that rivalry between phone companies will prevent them sharing their number pools.
Uh, because it would be bloody annoying to have to tap out a 38-digit number (IPv6 has 10^38 possible combinations, IPv4 doesn't have the capacity to be used for telephony) everytime you wanted to reach someone?
In making my decision not once will the concerns of the Greens, environmentalists, WhatWouldJesusDrivers or other issue-oriented activists enter the equation.Of course not. Why let the facts influence your decision?
Here's another fact for you: SUVs may have the reputation of being safe, but they aren't. They are far more likely to roll over due to high center-of-gravity.
Also, accidents that involve SUVs are (on average) more severe, and are more likely to involve fatalities than accidents between two 'normal' cars: SUVs and pickups make up about 40% of passenger vehicles in the US, but cause 60% of road fatalities.
Granted, this only resonates off the Jewish/Christian population, but hey, I'll stick my kneck out there this time. Do you -really- think it matters at the Pearly Gates if you drove a gas guzzler or a fuel efficient car?
Well, in the end it comes down to 'are you saved? Y/N'. But the Bible does talk about stewardship (governing Earth responsibly). And adopting an 'Apres moi la deluge' attitude by driving a 15-mpg unsafe barge isn't very responsible.
I've been toying with the idea of forwarding all my Korean and Chinese spam (80% of the spam I receive is in those languages) to their embassies. Currently,.kr and.cn ISPs are being bribed into giving spammers free reign. The Chinese and Korean governments could put a stop to that (IIRC South Korea does have spamming legislation), they just need to be made aware of the seriousness of the problem.
Sending the government a few spams won't do that, but sending them all the spam anyone receives might.
"Yay! No more jumpers! The days of mechanical configuration are finally drawing to a close! "
yes, this way it will all be configured the way your operating systems tells you it should be.
If I do it mechanically, I know its been done, if I use software, I know that tge software says its done.
Why would you possibly want to configure things like master/slave/CS? SCSI has shown that you don't miss anything by doing without. USB has shown that you don't miss anything by doing without SCSI's manual device IDs.
Yes, I know Windows sucks at automatically assigning IRQs and such, but that's an implementation problem, not a fundamnetal flaw of autoconfiguration. See the Macintosh: no IRQ settings, yet no problems.
Except that things move around, stuff gets unplugged, power failures, etc.
Including all that. Over the past ten years, I've had three VCRs fail, all due to lightning strike. Before failure, they all ran flawlessly for five years or more.
Define fair maintance.
A computer is much more crash-prone than a VCR (in my experience). A computer requires regular tinkering to ensure continued operation, a VCR doesn't.
b.) Unplug the VCR, reset the clock.
All of the VCRs I've bought for the last 5 years automatically pick up the correct time (from TV Text) when plugged in.
The interface on a PC-based PVR is much simplre and more straightforward than on the over-loaded controls of a VCR.
Only if you use a mouse and keyboard to control the PC. As soon as you use a remote controller, you get the overload problem again.
I'm sure we've all taped the wrong show because it was set to AM instead of PM.
Apart from the practical problems involved (like introducing a third measurement system and getting everyone to switch-again, for many), you mean?
In the end, every measurement system is arbitrary. In normal life, who cares about the definition of a unit? What's the practical difference between "1/299,792,458 of a second" and "1000 trillion Carbon-12 molecules strung end-to-end"? Sure, there's a certain elegance to defining units using physics.
Also, this already happens. Temperature (Celcius) is derived from the melting and boiling points of water. Length, weight and volume are also linked (one litre of water is one cubic decimeter is one kilogram). And wasn't the meter defined (a few definitions ago) as 1/x part of the circumference of the earth?
This is already being worked on. In Canada, for example. You can buy jammers. Here [theregister.co.uk] and here [theregister.co.uk] are two articles with more info.
Yay! No more jumpers! The days of mechanical configuration are finally drawing to a close!
But why did they include a new power connector? Specifically, a 15-pole connector not used in any current computers, with only 4 power leads going into it?
Oh, and the 'review' reads like a press release. They claim independence, but are they really?
It had an uptime of around 2-3 months before needing a reboot. My VCR can't even go that long without ending up losing it's time and flashing 12:00. With Linux, it'd likely be even better.
Then you've been rather unlucky with your VCR. I my experience, it's not unreasonable to expect five-year uptimes, and zero application crashes during that time, from a VCR. And zero maintenance. Try that with a computer.
Significant? Um, no. Without guide data, a DVR is hardly better than a regular VCR.
I've compared a number of DVRs (standalone, but the same goes for PC-based DVRs) and compared to guide-based PVRs they all suck.
Keeping track of what is on the HD is hard because these machines lack the information they need to label the recordings usefully. You'll have to enter a label yourself (from the remote, with +/- buttons, which is unbelievably tedious).
Also, the DVR can't automatically change recording time/date if a show is rescheduled.
So you get rid of the hassle of changing tapes, but you don't get rid of
the hassle of programming, of keeping track of interesting programs, and of keeping track of what's been recorded.
Guide-based PVRs can take care of all of these things.
Actually, for the simple reason that they're what the technological world was built on, and also the not-inconsequential fact that English units often tend to relate to the real-world better than thier Metric/SI counterparts.
Actually, this is a typical case of YMMV. If you've been using Imperial units all your life, SI units will seem awkward and unnatural. But it's the same the other way around. Your story can be reversed, situated in a Metric country, and it'll still be true.
Another good example of the oh-so-awkward size of metric units is the liters/100km unit that has to be used to measure fuel econonomy in reasonably sized numbers
Incorrect. It's perfectly feasible to use the 1 liter in x kilometers metric (abbreviated to 1:x). Which even yields an easy rule-of-thumb conversion to/from mpg: 10 mpg = 1:3.
And talk about awkward. How many feet go into a mile? How many lbs into a ton? With a bazillion conversion factors to choose from (rather than the trivial move-the-decimal-point operation needed with metric units), it's a miracle the Industrial Revolution got off the ground at all.
the recent NASA Mars probe debacle only happened when one group deviated from accepted industry practice...
This isn't an argument in favor of using Imperial measurements, it's an argument in favor of standardizing. The US is one of IIRC three holdouts [*] on adopting the SI (the acronym isn't accidental). Give it up!
This reminds me of a quote I recently saw (adapted from something John Ruskin said):
There is hardly anything in this world that someone somewhere couldn't make less well and sell a little more cheaply, and people who are guided by price alone deserve to fall prey to such deals.
IMO, VCRs are an example of 'optimization' gone too far. We're at a point where more and more consumer goods are being considered disposable, because repairs are more expensive than buying a new one. This has advantages (new equipment is available cheaply) but also disadvantages (lots of waste).
And, market economics being what they are, you don't have the option to buy more durable (=more expensive) goods once cheaper, low-quality alternatives are available.
IDE bandwidth issues? Do those cards have hardware or software encoding? With hardware encoding, you should be able to move several video streams from/to an IDE device simultaneously.
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25 posts, and already 4 alternative online encyclopedias have been mentioned. Isn't this a gigantic waste of effort?
But that doesn't seem to be a solution to the problem: If you press Shift-E, the light doesn't reach the finger that presses the Shift key. So how does the software know it has been pressed?
Also, Shift isn't the only key that can have this problem. All the modifier keys can.
My car has a 1.6 engine and a 60 Ah battery. The starter motor is rated at 1 kW.
if your worried about SUV to compact crash severity perhaps we should ban the crappy tuna can cars (like my Civic) ; afterall, SUVs are not new and aren't going away
Nonsense. Compacts aren't going away any more than SUVs are. In fact, banning SUVs would have a better effect on safety than banning compacts, and there would be other benefits, too (environmental - less use of resources, and congestion-wise: smaller cars take up less space).
Lastly, how the Hell can you claim SuVs cause accidents?
I claim that when a crash occurs between an SUV and a car, there's a higher probability one of the people involved in the crash dies, than when two cars collide. An SUV hitting a pedestrian is also more likely to result in the pedestrian dying than a normal car hitting that pedestrian would.
Only now are these issues beginning to be addressed. Typically, not by the established SUV makers (read: Detroit), but by newcomers (Honda: pedestrians, and Volvo: overrun protection).
For me, it's the other way round: Why bother filling the phone's address book when I routinely use 5-6 phones (2 at home, several offices) in the course of a week? It's a PITA to keep updating/synchronizing all that data. I keep my phone info in just one place: my Palmpilot.
Also, phones connected to landlines seem to lag behind cellphones in this area: of those 6, only one has an address book with more than 10 slots. This has a lot to do with the fact that landphones have a much longer life than cellphones.
One big factor is the way numbers are allocated. For historical reasons, numbers are grouped: every number with an XYZ prefex gets routed to the XYZ exchange. Once you placed an exchange somewhere, it had 10^5 phone numbers available, whether it needed them or not. I think you'll still find a lot of prefixes that haven't been filled yet.
A similar thing happens when netblocks are given to companies. If a company needs 1500 phone lines, 10,000 numbers are reserved (think about it as applying a decimal netmask).
Now that phone exchanges are mostly digital (over here, the last analog exchange was phased out years ago, IDK about the US, though), it should be possible to free up those unused numbers.
There are more reasons: at least over here, many numbers are 'locked away' in unused 'prepaid' SIM cards for cellphones. In the US, I expect that rivalry between phone companies will prevent them sharing their number pools.
Uh, because it would be bloody annoying to have to tap out a 38-digit number (IPv6 has 10^38 possible combinations, IPv4 doesn't have the capacity to be used for telephony) everytime you wanted to reach someone?
i.e. what happens when one finger taps a key that is in the shadow of another finger? The review doesn't mention this.
In making my decision not once will the concerns of the Greens, environmentalists, WhatWouldJesusDrivers or other issue-oriented activists enter the equation.Of course not. Why let the facts influence your decision?
Here's another fact for you: SUVs may have the reputation of being safe, but they aren't. They are far more likely to roll over due to high center-of-gravity.
Also, accidents that involve SUVs are (on average) more severe, and are more likely to involve fatalities than accidents between two 'normal' cars: SUVs and pickups make up about 40% of passenger vehicles in the US, but cause 60% of road fatalities.
Granted, this only resonates off the Jewish/Christian population, but hey, I'll stick my kneck out there this time. Do you -really- think it matters at the Pearly Gates if you drove a gas guzzler or a fuel efficient car?
Well, in the end it comes down to 'are you saved? Y/N'. But the Bible does talk about stewardship (governing Earth responsibly). And adopting an 'Apres moi la deluge' attitude by driving a 15-mpg unsafe barge isn't very responsible.
A car battery is roughly 30AH @ 12V,
30 Ah is rather minimal. 50-60 Ah is more common.
I've been toying with the idea of forwarding all my Korean and Chinese spam (80% of the spam I receive is in those languages) to their embassies. Currently, .kr and .cn ISPs are being bribed into giving spammers free reign. The Chinese and Korean governments could put a stop to that (IIRC South Korea does have spamming legislation), they just need to be made aware of the seriousness of the problem.
Sending the government a few spams won't do that, but sending them all the spam anyone receives might.
"Yay! No more jumpers! The days of mechanical configuration are finally drawing to a close! " yes, this way it will all be configured the way your operating systems tells you it should be. If I do it mechanically, I know its been done, if I use software, I know that tge software says its done.
Why would you possibly want to configure things like master/slave/CS? SCSI has shown that you don't miss anything by doing without. USB has shown that you don't miss anything by doing without SCSI's manual device IDs.
Yes, I know Windows sucks at automatically assigning IRQs and such, but that's an implementation problem, not a fundamnetal flaw of autoconfiguration. See the Macintosh: no IRQ settings, yet no problems.
Except that things move around, stuff gets unplugged, power failures, etc.
Including all that. Over the past ten years, I've had three VCRs fail, all due to lightning strike. Before failure, they all ran flawlessly for five years or more.
Define fair maintance.
A computer is much more crash-prone than a VCR (in my experience). A computer requires regular tinkering to ensure continued operation, a VCR doesn't.
b.) Unplug the VCR, reset the clock.
All of the VCRs I've bought for the last 5 years automatically pick up the correct time (from TV Text) when plugged in.
The interface on a PC-based PVR is much simplre and more straightforward than on the over-loaded controls of a VCR.
Only if you use a mouse and keyboard to control the PC. As soon as you use a remote controller, you get the overload problem again.
I'm sure we've all taped the wrong show because it was set to AM instead of PM.
Using the 24-hour time format helps against that.
Apart from the practical problems involved (like introducing a third measurement system and getting everyone to switch-again, for many), you mean?
In the end, every measurement system is arbitrary. In normal life, who cares about the definition of a unit? What's the practical difference between "1/299,792,458 of a second" and "1000 trillion Carbon-12 molecules strung end-to-end"? Sure, there's a certain elegance to defining units using physics.
Also, this already happens. Temperature (Celcius) is derived from the melting and boiling points of water. Length, weight and volume are also linked (one litre of water is one cubic decimeter is one kilogram). And wasn't the meter defined (a few definitions ago) as 1/x part of the circumference of the earth?
This is already being worked on. In Canada, for example. You can buy jammers. Here [theregister.co.uk] and here [theregister.co.uk] are two articles with more info.
Yay! No more jumpers! The days of mechanical configuration are finally drawing to a close!
But why did they include a new power connector? Specifically, a 15-pole connector not used in any current computers, with only 4 power leads going into it?
Oh, and the 'review' reads like a press release. They claim independence, but are they really?
The small diameter can be compensated for with appropriate gearing. Bigger tires that are this wide, are very heavy. Too heavy, I'd expect.
The tires need to be wide so the bike will ride on top of the snow, rather than plough through it.
It had an uptime of around 2-3 months before needing a reboot. My VCR can't even go that long without ending up losing it's time and flashing 12:00. With Linux, it'd likely be even better.
Then you've been rather unlucky with your VCR. I my experience, it's not unreasonable to expect five-year uptimes, and zero application crashes during that time, from a VCR. And zero maintenance. Try that with a computer.
Significant? Um, no. Without guide data, a DVR is hardly better than a regular VCR.
I've compared a number of DVRs (standalone, but the same goes for PC-based DVRs) and compared to guide-based PVRs they all suck.
Keeping track of what is on the HD is hard because these machines lack the information they need to label the recordings usefully. You'll have to enter a label yourself (from the remote, with +/- buttons, which is unbelievably tedious).
Also, the DVR can't automatically change recording time/date if a show is rescheduled.
So you get rid of the hassle of changing tapes, but you don't get rid of the hassle of programming, of keeping track of interesting programs, and of keeping track of what's been recorded.
Guide-based PVRs can take care of all of these things.
Actually, for the simple reason that they're what the technological world was built on, and also the not-inconsequential fact that English units often tend to relate to the real-world better than thier Metric/SI counterparts.
Actually, this is a typical case of YMMV. If you've been using Imperial units all your life, SI units will seem awkward and unnatural. But it's the same the other way around. Your story can be reversed, situated in a Metric country, and it'll still be true.
Another good example of the oh-so-awkward size of metric units is the liters/100km unit that has to be used to measure fuel econonomy in reasonably sized numbers
Incorrect. It's perfectly feasible to use the 1 liter in x kilometers metric (abbreviated to 1:x). Which even yields an easy rule-of-thumb conversion to/from mpg: 10 mpg = 1:3.
And talk about awkward. How many feet go into a mile? How many lbs into a ton? With a bazillion conversion factors to choose from (rather than the trivial move-the-decimal-point operation needed with metric units), it's a miracle the Industrial Revolution got off the ground at all.
the recent NASA Mars probe debacle only happened when one group deviated from accepted industry practice...
This isn't an argument in favor of using Imperial measurements, it's an argument in favor of standardizing. The US is one of IIRC three holdouts [*] on adopting the SI (the acronym isn't accidental). Give it up!
*: Talk about the Axis of Evil...
Looks like it. My bonus's gone, too.
This reminds me of a quote I recently saw (adapted from something John Ruskin said):
There is hardly anything in this world that someone somewhere couldn't make less well and sell a little more cheaply, and people who are guided by price alone deserve to fall prey to such deals.
IMO, VCRs are an example of 'optimization' gone too far. We're at a point where more and more consumer goods are being considered disposable, because repairs are more expensive than buying a new one. This has advantages (new equipment is available cheaply) but also disadvantages (lots of waste).
And, market economics being what they are, you don't have the option to buy more durable (=more expensive) goods once cheaper, low-quality alternatives are available.
Why the US still clings to imperial units is beyond me.
Duh. It's because Americans still measure everything in shitloads.
IDE bandwidth issues? Do those cards have hardware or software encoding? With hardware encoding, you should be able to move several video streams from/to an IDE device simultaneously.