Times change. There will always be something fun for a geek to do in her or his spare time.
Once there was control-line model aircraft. Now they use radio controls.
As technology progresses, it will become feasible for hobbyists to get their hands on something else. Perhaps laptops with WiFi and big amplifiers and antennas will be the ham-radio of the future. There's no shame in retiring a long-loved technology. The real point to ham radio was the thrill of learning about technology. So why not simply move on to something new and relevant to the jobs of today?
Think of all the amateur astronomers whose telescopes became useless due to light polution. It didn't kill off amateur astronomy, but it meant that you had to really want to do it to go for a drive.
... especially one that trained and will perhaps continue to train our bright young electronic engineering types to think hard and make duct tape work in new ways;)
If your company goes belly-up, and the PHB lets you go home with a company server, it's yours to keep. Regardless of how stupid the PHB feels afterwards. A gift is a gift.
So if the PHB lets you go home with all the code, maybe you could argue (*cough* make up *cough*) that it was a parting gift for years of service?
If you didn't start selling licenses to the code they probably wouldn't notice or care anyway, same as if you didn't turn around and sell the company server for $100k. Maybe release it as GPL? If no money is being made, the developers will probably agree with you that it was a good thing to do, while the management won't notice for years to come.
NOTE: I am most probably an idiot. Take my advice at less than face value. Do not listen to me for I Am Not A Lawyer. (iANAL being the complement of ANAL)
I have found that the only time I get any really creative work done (i.e. coding or writing papers) is when I'm at work in a cubicle, or it's after midnight and I'm at home. Both cases require me to be tired and full of caffeine, and to have silence or my own music overriding any outside noises.
When I am well-rested I don't get much done at all, there's about 10^12 things that I think about, none of them directly related to what I'm supposed to be doing. But when I'm only awake because of an infusion of caffeine, I no longer think about all those other things, I'm just a finely-honed coding machine. I suspect that the part of my mind that's full of enthusiasm for non-work just gets shut down when I'm needing sleep.
Sometimes I wake up and read my code from the night before and don't even understand it. The comments tell me what I've done, but I don't see how it could possibly work. I rewrite the section in question, making it bigger of course, then slowly think of all the optimisations that scream out to be done. By the time I'm finished, it's the original code all over again. But I know for a fact that when I wrote it the first time, it just came out that way in the first iteration. It's scary sometimes what I find myself writing when I'm a coding zombie.
So my advice is to try working during hours when the house is quiet (like after midnight, but *not* the night before it's due!!). Use familiar music to drown out any distractions, but if you find yourself listening to the music instead of working, it's not yet familiar enough. It should blend into the background, not stick out. In my case, my music becomes familiar as I do the work, so there's probably a psychological association between that kind of music (hardcore techno) and doing work. If you don't succeede with just doing that, try some caffeine as a means of staying awake when you need to sleep, and see if it removes the distractions. Your mileage may vary, but for me it's a basic necessity.
It can be hard on the body and social life, keeping that kind of behaviour up, but I find that if I do it for a fortnight I get more work done than the previous month. When there's a real incentive, like deadlines and exams, then it becomes a necessary part of studying. The downside is when your supervisor organises a meeting at 10am and you normally wake up at 2pm;)
My lab has a roll of superconducting wire that says otherwise;)
However, had the power supply been on, i'm sure the results would have been much closer to your predictions.
I've touched a flyback transformer output while it was running, got a couple of burns and fell off my chair (which yanked out the power) but no serious damage even though the current went from one hand to the other (via the chest presumably). It depends a lot on the power output of the supply and the capacitance it's charging. Had that flyback been hooked up to a doorknob cap, I would have done more than fall off the chair (or is that less than fall of the chair? Who knows but it makes for a funny mental image).
You forget that Microsoft and SCO are a part of Umbrella Corporation. Most likely their *real* research facilities are underground, where they are working on a virus to make us all into zombies who buy what they are told to buy. Oh and eat people.
Thanks! If I don't get a reply shortly I will give it a call.
If the ACCC is in Canberra (where I live) then I might even offer to help out with the technical side of things.
Thanks for the great idea - I did just that. Lucky I'm running a small computer business;)
The major change I made though is to change "Linux PC operating system" to "Linux operating system kernel". This is a big deal as Linux is not an operating system, so it's not a good sign when people write in thinking it is.
That's actually kinda funny as I posted the link to the SCO press release on the Canberra LUG mailing list (Australia), and we're also having discussions about what to do in response to SCO. I think the Victorian group must have their meeting before us or something;) Ours is tonight, we'll see what we decide.
I'm impressed with the ACCC idea, my best legal one was to sue them for libel in a class action (since they put up a pretty harsh attack on our reputations without a shred of evidence).
I vote for flying a plane into SCO headquarters;) We're obviously commie terrorists anyway, might as well act like it.
Seriously though, we're talking about giving away lots and lots of copies of Knoppix... well I'm talking and others are still deciding. But it's easy, not that expensive, and gives you a chance to demonstrate it to the recipients if there's some kind of stall being set up for it.
I'm getting really tired of hearing this crap about foreigners taking all the jobs from the US. I'm an Australian electronic engineer and I have considered moving to the US from time to time. But the attidude that I'm sensing, at least here on/., is that I'm not welcome. I must be a job theif, since being highly skilled has nothing to do with it.
If I'm not welcome there, but I'm still skilled enough to do the job, then I'll just stay here and do my best to move the job here as well. I may not succeed, since people in India are highly skilled too and a lot cheaper, but then it's the same logic again. The job goes where it's most efficiently performed. I could move to India to do the job and probably have a lot of fun doing it too. I wouldn't get rich quick though but I don't care. Plus I might be welcome there as my training could be of benefit to the locals, I have no problem teaching what I know, just as I have no problem opening up my source code. It costs less to live somewhere, so the jobs get done there. Eventually the countries with high standards of living get brought down by globalisation, while the poor countries get brought up. It's only fair really. The trick is to find new jobs that can't be done in poor countries, then the rich countries can stay rich while the poor countries come up. Such jobs tend to be high-tech intellectual jobs, because we have the advantage of a decent education system. But don't just sit back or the poor countries will once again out-compete us. We need newer and better high-tech jobs.
The reality of globalisation is that efficiency tends to increase. Corruption and corporate profiteering does too but I'll leave that alone. If it is more efficient to do something overseas, then thats what happens. Take the Australian sugar cane industry on the northeast coast. The land isn't particularly well suited to the growing of sugarcane, and the runoff from the farms that makes its way into the Great Barrier Reef is very much responsible for the fact that we won't have any living reef in that region in even one decade from now. But that industry is what sustains whole communities. The most efficient solution is to let people in poor countries grow lots of sugarcane, since the price collapsed and it's no longer economically viable for us to do it and maintain the standard of living that we have come to expect. But that would upset a lot of people whose communities would become surplus population. They have the option to do something that is economically viable, like become engineers and other intellectual professionals and tradespeople, but they don't want to adapt to the changing times. Instead they would rather all go poor trying to keep on cane farming. In the end they will all lose their farms since the price isn't coming back up. Plus we as a nation lose the Great Barrier Reef which would have to be worth more to the economy in tourism than cane farming. So the reality is that as a matter of efficiency we should stop cane farming, and find something else for those farmers to do. It's not like they really have a choice anyway, it's coming one way or the other. A forward-thinking government would make sure there are opportunities for these people, so their communities don't have to totally collapse. But our retarded government simply ignores problems like these. It's easier to close off a market than to accept that it's no longer viable to compete anyway.
People are welcome to complain as much as they want. They want to stay put and not move around, they want to keep their communities going long after the usefulness is gone. But as an engineer I can expect to move around every few years, country to country, in search of new opportunities. This is one of the key differences between the older jobs and the newer ones. In the past travel overseas was expensive and time-consuming. Now it's becoming more and more necessary. Anyone may find that their profession is no longer needed in their ho
But I was under the impression that nothing could go faster than c;) Except perhaps assembler but then you would have to be some kind of god to write an app in it...
Explain to them what the extra effort is going to get them down the track. Explain that no matter what the competitors say, there is no fast way to write reliable, high-quality code. If they still want quick-n-dirty then that's what they pay for and that's what they get. As long as it's documented that that's what they paid for, then when things start decaying and getting more expensive to fix you can remind them.
People don't always want a good solution. Politicians and managers seeking a contract for something important often seek the cheapest, most crappy solution that stays working for the duration of their time in that position. After that, it's for the next guy to sort out. If you want the sale, you have to accept that. Just get it in writing that the next guy can't argue with. If somebody else gets that particular contract because the customer didn't want quick-n-dirty in writing, then be glad it was them and not you, for when the customer's PHB moves on to bigger and better things, they'll have to explain to the new guy why the code isn't very good, while you had the time to build a relationship with some other customer who appreciates honesty.
Just my $0.02, I haven't been a project manager but I have been working under one.
At 20kV it doesn't take much capacitance to give you a boot - a brief current pulse as you discharge the capacitance. And if the power supply is still switched on, then your flesh tends to burn where the hot spark touches you. Volts seldom occur without Amps so don't go around thinking you're not going to die when you touch a 20kV source;) If you're lucky you'll just be really sore afterwards. Ever touched the EHT lead of a switched-off TV?
At least that's what my freshman physics teacher always said.
Well then by all means touch the TV lead with a fast ammeter (CRO and resistor) and you will find out he was right, it's the Amps that will kill you;) Or take my word for it and don't touch 20kV.
That they do. They represent the greed that is fundamental to humanity and will plague it forever. If they had been interested in the good of the people rather than their own egos, they wouldn't have been able to stockpile a million bucks.
The chance to lob a few millionaires into space should not be missed! Just hope they don't start colonies of space-cowboys, we could do without that.
As I am still registered as a voter in South Australia, I felt it would be hypocritical of me not to write to Mr. Rann with a counter-argument. After all, I winge an awful lot about politicians being out of touch, if I didn't make an effort now that I have a connection to the issue, I wouldn't be able to keep on winging;)
I wrote it within a few hours of the/. story, I hope to post it tonight. I may even put it up online since that's exactly what ISC did with their letter.
Same thing happened in Adelaide
on
A Mighty Wind
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· Score: 1
I recently lived in Adelaide, South Australia, and the same thing happened there.
In the hills to the south-east of the city, some investors decided to build a wind-farm. It was all okayed and ready to go. A couple hundred turbines. But the selfish dumb-fscks who live within viewing distance protested and raised a hell of an uproar about the rolling plains being turned into a wind farm. Apparently an eyesore is far worse than burning gas to power their (and our) homes.
So now they are only building around 50 turbines.
Seriously dudes, there are so few investors willing to toss their fortunes away like that, that if someone comes along who wants to do some good in the world, you shouldn't violently oppose them. Selfish dumb-fscks!
Imagine what the rolling plains will look like under a few metres of water due to global warming.
On a semi-related topic, also in the same city, a company (Optus I think) was planning to roll-out coax cables to an entire suburb to provide them with cable TV and broadband. But a vocal minority put a stop to it. Apparently, the cable company was going to put a cable up on the existing power-line poles. One extra cable to a pole with maybe 10 already. But the vocal minority insisted that the only way they could proceed was to fut the bill of burying their own coax *and* the existing power and electricity cables, to tear down the poles.
As you would expect, the cable company couldn't afford it, and even if they could they would have every right to tell them where to shove it. So the people who live there have no cable TV or broadband because of a few old farts who should have done something when the poles first went up, not 50 years later. If I was in that situation I would find the name and address of the protestors and go around paint-balling their houses for taking away my broadband. Even more stupid dumb-fscks.
Sure, you can put together a kick-arse LAN party without too much trouble. But if it's going to be big enough to attract attention from non-geeks nearby, then don't skimp on security.
The last organised LAN I ever went to (over a year ago now), I was mugged afterwards at knife-point. I lost my mobile phone and wallet, but they didn't take my computer which I was standing next to. Most probably because of all the friends nearby, the mugging caught them off guard and they didn't react to it, but taking my computer would have had a fair few people coming to my assistance.
Later the police told me that the area where the party was held was one of the worst crime neighbourhoods in Adelaide. Apparently people get mugged in broad daylight. So although the hall would have been dirt cheap at that time of night, it really isn't the right place to hold a LAN.
Even though the organisers also had someone steal a 24-port switch, they still wouldn't move the venue. They practically covered the incident up. The other gamers to this day are unaware of what happened and has probably happened pretty regularly since. The organisers did hire some security guards to guard the cars, but my friend who still attends that party tells me that his car got broken into the very next time he went.
So my advice to you is this: imagine how you would feel if one of your friends, or one of their friends, were mugged at knife-point. Or worse, if their computer were stolen. Then you will make the right decision about the venue and any security issues.
Don't be half-arsed about it, it's better to have less food and no theft, than for the majority to be happier while one person has a really rotten night.
A lot of money is going into rocket technology also; with this and the 'European version' of GPS are we heading towards a future conflict across the Atlantic?
I don't see why a group of countries, who were previously totally dependent on a distant country for a particular service (GPS), should cause a conflict when they eventually decide to do it for themselves.
Although considering the history, acknowledged or otherwise, of the US when it comes to these things, they will definitely be considering whether to allow this to go ahead. After all, you can't deny other countries access to space if there's another player willing to grant it. It's all about US freedoms, not everybody else's.
Stay tuned for more rampant cynicism the next time I respond to a post discussing conflict and the US!
Modchipping legal Down Under
on
Copyright Defeats?
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· Score: 5, Informative
You may recall that/. covered the ruling in favour of an Australian who was selling PS2 modchips. He still got caught on trademark infringement, but nevertheless modchipping a PS2 is now legal in this country.
Some quick googling turned up
this link which pretty much explains the situation.
The DMCA can't touch us if we all live Down Under.
For a little while. Until we join the Coalition of the Willing-To-Suppress-Basic-Freedoms.
Although I can assure you from this point forth that I am a man, I thank you for the refreshing insight provided by your assumption that I'm not.
In fact, there isn't enough information in the initial post to determine my gender, yet up until now I haven't seen one person refer to me as she. So while there isn't any offence intended, we geeks are demonstrating that we're just as latently sexist as the rest of the world.
This would have something to do with the established fact that most/. readers are men, but nevertheless it should be our goal to change our attitudes and assumptions about the gender of semi-anonymous writers. We owe it to humanity.
Just as we should strive to use free software, so too should we strive to be gender-neutral, lest a single woman or man be put off from becoming a geek.
Actually the NI GPIB drivers didn't look too bad OTOH, although I've been warned that they might not build under Linux 2.4, you may need 2.2. But porting 2.2 to 2.4 is usually pretty easy.
Fortunately the NI GPIB cards seem to use the same chips as their competitors, and that means you might be able to use any other GPIB driver. I've seen other GPIB card manufacturers who do give nice drivers.
The NI website, in a hidden corner, advertises that NI has Linux support. Then they link to Comedi. But you can be pretty sure they don't support Comedi in any way.
All I can say is you should be wary of NI's Linux support, and maybe they don't deserve your custom anyway if that's the only product with support. There are competitors who seem to be helpful, plus the cards are pretty similar. Maybe even NI's own Windows drivers will work on competitors' cards? (at least the ISA ones?)
Slashdot Mirror
Times change. There will always be something fun for a geek to do in her or his spare time.
Once there was control-line model aircraft. Now they use radio controls.
As technology progresses, it will become feasible for hobbyists to get their hands on something else. Perhaps laptops with WiFi and big amplifiers and antennas will be the ham-radio of the future. There's no shame in retiring a long-loved technology. The real point to ham radio was the thrill of learning about technology. So why not simply move on to something new and relevant to the jobs of today?
Think of all the amateur astronomers whose telescopes became useless due to light polution. It didn't kill off amateur astronomy, but it meant that you had to really want to do it to go for a drive.
... especially one that trained and will perhaps continue to train our bright young electronic engineering types to think hard and make duct tape work in new ways ;)
Fortunately the interference from power-line broadband wasn't an issue at the time ;)
This post isn't aimed specifically at the one it's in reply to, it applies to the whole thread.
We have the same citizens vs illegals arguments here in Australia. What we as a nation fail to recognise is that both sides are people.
Go and watch the film GATTACA until you understand the point I'm making.
If your company goes belly-up, and the PHB lets you go home with a company server, it's yours to keep. Regardless of how stupid the PHB feels afterwards. A gift is a gift.
So if the PHB lets you go home with all the code, maybe you could argue (*cough* make up *cough*) that it was a parting gift for years of service?
If you didn't start selling licenses to the code they probably wouldn't notice or care anyway, same as if you didn't turn around and sell the company server for $100k. Maybe release it as GPL? If no money is being made, the developers will probably agree with you that it was a good thing to do, while the management won't notice for years to come.
NOTE: I am most probably an idiot. Take my advice at less than face value. Do not listen to me for I Am Not A Lawyer. (iANAL being the complement of ANAL)
I would NOT recommend caffeine of any kind.
;)
I have found that the only time I get any really creative work done (i.e. coding or writing papers) is when I'm at work in a cubicle, or it's after midnight and I'm at home. Both cases require me to be tired and full of caffeine, and to have silence or my own music overriding any outside noises.
When I am well-rested I don't get much done at all, there's about 10^12 things that I think about, none of them directly related to what I'm supposed to be doing. But when I'm only awake because of an infusion of caffeine, I no longer think about all those other things, I'm just a finely-honed coding machine. I suspect that the part of my mind that's full of enthusiasm for non-work just gets shut down when I'm needing sleep.
Sometimes I wake up and read my code from the night before and don't even understand it. The comments tell me what I've done, but I don't see how it could possibly work. I rewrite the section in question, making it bigger of course, then slowly think of all the optimisations that scream out to be done. By the time I'm finished, it's the original code all over again. But I know for a fact that when I wrote it the first time, it just came out that way in the first iteration. It's scary sometimes what I find myself writing when I'm a coding zombie.
So my advice is to try working during hours when the house is quiet (like after midnight, but *not* the night before it's due!!). Use familiar music to drown out any distractions, but if you find yourself listening to the music instead of working, it's not yet familiar enough. It should blend into the background, not stick out. In my case, my music becomes familiar as I do the work, so there's probably a psychological association between that kind of music (hardcore techno) and doing work. If you don't succeede with just doing that, try some caffeine as a means of staying awake when you need to sleep, and see if it removes the distractions. Your mileage may vary, but for me it's a basic necessity.
It can be hard on the body and social life, keeping that kind of behaviour up, but I find that if I do it for a fortnight I get more work done than the previous month. When there's a real incentive, like deadlines and exams, then it becomes a necessary part of studying. The downside is when your supervisor organises a meeting at 10am and you normally wake up at 2pm
no current can flow without a driving voltage
;)
My lab has a roll of superconducting wire that says otherwise
However, had the power supply been on, i'm sure the results would have been much closer to your predictions.
I've touched a flyback transformer output while it was running, got a couple of burns and fell off my chair (which yanked out the power) but no serious damage even though the current went from one hand to the other (via the chest presumably). It depends a lot on the power output of the supply and the capacitance it's charging. Had that flyback been hooked up to a doorknob cap, I would have done more than fall off the chair (or is that less than fall of the chair? Who knows but it makes for a funny mental image).
all current Linux users have already seen the secret SCO IP in Linux
Not very secret anymore is it? It's just a shame nobody knows what it is...
You forget that Microsoft and SCO are a part of Umbrella Corporation. Most likely their *real* research facilities are underground, where they are working on a virus to make us all into zombies who buy what they are told to buy. Oh and eat people.
(Morbo voice from Futurama)
We will crush their puny Windows server with our mighty slashdotting.
Thanks! If I don't get a reply shortly I will give it a call. If the ACCC is in Canberra (where I live) then I might even offer to help out with the technical side of things.
Thanks for the great idea - I did just that. Lucky I'm running a small computer business ;)
The major change I made though is to change "Linux PC operating system" to "Linux operating system kernel". This is a big deal as Linux is not an operating system, so it's not a good sign when people write in thinking it is.
Thanks for the great idea!
That's actually kinda funny as I posted the link to the SCO press release on the Canberra LUG mailing list (Australia), and we're also having discussions about what to do in response to SCO. I think the Victorian group must have their meeting before us or something ;) Ours is tonight, we'll see what we decide.
;) We're obviously commie terrorists anyway, might as well act like it.
I'm impressed with the ACCC idea, my best legal one was to sue them for libel in a class action (since they put up a pretty harsh attack on our reputations without a shred of evidence).
I vote for flying a plane into SCO headquarters
Seriously though, we're talking about giving away lots and lots of copies of Knoppix... well I'm talking and others are still deciding. But it's easy, not that expensive, and gives you a chance to demonstrate it to the recipients if there's some kind of stall being set up for it.
... I can only hope it is a New World Order.
/., is that I'm not welcome. I must be a job theif, since being highly skilled has nothing to do with it.
I'm getting really tired of hearing this crap about foreigners taking all the jobs from the US. I'm an Australian electronic engineer and I have considered moving to the US from time to time. But the attidude that I'm sensing, at least here on
If I'm not welcome there, but I'm still skilled enough to do the job, then I'll just stay here and do my best to move the job here as well. I may not succeed, since people in India are highly skilled too and a lot cheaper, but then it's the same logic again. The job goes where it's most efficiently performed. I could move to India to do the job and probably have a lot of fun doing it too. I wouldn't get rich quick though but I don't care. Plus I might be welcome there as my training could be of benefit to the locals, I have no problem teaching what I know, just as I have no problem opening up my source code. It costs less to live somewhere, so the jobs get done there. Eventually the countries with high standards of living get brought down by globalisation, while the poor countries get brought up. It's only fair really. The trick is to find new jobs that can't be done in poor countries, then the rich countries can stay rich while the poor countries come up. Such jobs tend to be high-tech intellectual jobs, because we have the advantage of a decent education system. But don't just sit back or the poor countries will once again out-compete us. We need newer and better high-tech jobs.
The reality of globalisation is that efficiency tends to increase. Corruption and corporate profiteering does too but I'll leave that alone. If it is more efficient to do something overseas, then thats what happens. Take the Australian sugar cane industry on the northeast coast. The land isn't particularly well suited to the growing of sugarcane, and the runoff from the farms that makes its way into the Great Barrier Reef is very much responsible for the fact that we won't have any living reef in that region in even one decade from now. But that industry is what sustains whole communities. The most efficient solution is to let people in poor countries grow lots of sugarcane, since the price collapsed and it's no longer economically viable for us to do it and maintain the standard of living that we have come to expect. But that would upset a lot of people whose communities would become surplus population. They have the option to do something that is economically viable, like become engineers and other intellectual professionals and tradespeople, but they don't want to adapt to the changing times. Instead they would rather all go poor trying to keep on cane farming. In the end they will all lose their farms since the price isn't coming back up. Plus we as a nation lose the Great Barrier Reef which would have to be worth more to the economy in tourism than cane farming. So the reality is that as a matter of efficiency we should stop cane farming, and find something else for those farmers to do. It's not like they really have a choice anyway, it's coming one way or the other. A forward-thinking government would make sure there are opportunities for these people, so their communities don't have to totally collapse. But our retarded government simply ignores problems like these. It's easier to close off a market than to accept that it's no longer viable to compete anyway.
People are welcome to complain as much as they want. They want to stay put and not move around, they want to keep their communities going long after the usefulness is gone. But as an engineer I can expect to move around every few years, country to country, in search of new opportunities. This is one of the key differences between the older jobs and the newer ones. In the past travel overseas was expensive and time-consuming. Now it's becoming more and more necessary. Anyone may find that their profession is no longer needed in their ho
But I was under the impression that nothing could go faster than c ;) Except perhaps assembler but then you would have to be some kind of god to write an app in it...
I think it should be up to the customer.
Explain to them what the extra effort is going to get them down the track. Explain that no matter what the competitors say, there is no fast way to write reliable, high-quality code. If they still want quick-n-dirty then that's what they pay for and that's what they get. As long as it's documented that that's what they paid for, then when things start decaying and getting more expensive to fix you can remind them.
People don't always want a good solution. Politicians and managers seeking a contract for something important often seek the cheapest, most crappy solution that stays working for the duration of their time in that position. After that, it's for the next guy to sort out. If you want the sale, you have to accept that. Just get it in writing that the next guy can't argue with. If somebody else gets that particular contract because the customer didn't want quick-n-dirty in writing, then be glad it was them and not you, for when the customer's PHB moves on to bigger and better things, they'll have to explain to the new guy why the code isn't very good, while you had the time to build a relationship with some other customer who appreciates honesty.
Just my $0.02, I haven't been a project manager but I have been working under one.
It's the current (amps) that kill, not volts...
;) If you're lucky you'll just be really sore afterwards. Ever touched the EHT lead of a switched-off TV?
;) Or take my word for it and don't touch 20kV.
At 20kV it doesn't take much capacitance to give you a boot - a brief current pulse as you discharge the capacitance. And if the power supply is still switched on, then your flesh tends to burn where the hot spark touches you. Volts seldom occur without Amps so don't go around thinking you're not going to die when you touch a 20kV source
At least that's what my freshman physics teacher always said.
Well then by all means touch the TV lead with a fast ammeter (CRO and resistor) and you will find out he was right, it's the Amps that will kill you
represent humanity
That they do. They represent the greed that is fundamental to humanity and will plague it forever. If they had been interested in the good of the people rather than their own egos, they wouldn't have been able to stockpile a million bucks.
The chance to lob a few millionaires into space should not be missed! Just hope they don't start colonies of space-cowboys, we could do without that.
As I am still registered as a voter in South Australia, I felt it would be hypocritical of me not to write to Mr. Rann with a counter-argument. After all, I winge an awful lot about politicians being out of touch, if I didn't make an effort now that I have a connection to the issue, I wouldn't be able to keep on winging ;)
/. story, I hope to post it tonight. I may even put it up online since that's exactly what ISC did with their letter.
I wrote it within a few hours of the
I recently lived in Adelaide, South Australia, and the same thing happened there.
In the hills to the south-east of the city, some investors decided to build a wind-farm. It was all okayed and ready to go. A couple hundred turbines. But the selfish dumb-fscks who live within viewing distance protested and raised a hell of an uproar about the rolling plains being turned into a wind farm. Apparently an eyesore is far worse than burning gas to power their (and our) homes.
So now they are only building around 50 turbines.
Seriously dudes, there are so few investors willing to toss their fortunes away like that, that if someone comes along who wants to do some good in the world, you shouldn't violently oppose them. Selfish dumb-fscks!
Imagine what the rolling plains will look like under a few metres of water due to global warming.
On a semi-related topic, also in the same city, a company (Optus I think) was planning to roll-out coax cables to an entire suburb to provide them with cable TV and broadband. But a vocal minority put a stop to it. Apparently, the cable company was going to put a cable up on the existing power-line poles. One extra cable to a pole with maybe 10 already. But the vocal minority insisted that the only way they could proceed was to fut the bill of burying their own coax *and* the existing power and electricity cables, to tear down the poles.
As you would expect, the cable company couldn't afford it, and even if they could they would have every right to tell them where to shove it. So the people who live there have no cable TV or broadband because of a few old farts who should have done something when the poles first went up, not 50 years later. If I was in that situation I would find the name and address of the protestors and go around paint-balling their houses for taking away my broadband. Even more stupid dumb-fscks.
Sure, you can put together a kick-arse LAN party without too much trouble. But if it's going to be big enough to attract attention from non-geeks nearby, then don't skimp on security.
The last organised LAN I ever went to (over a year ago now), I was mugged afterwards at knife-point. I lost my mobile phone and wallet, but they didn't take my computer which I was standing next to. Most probably because of all the friends nearby, the mugging caught them off guard and they didn't react to it, but taking my computer would have had a fair few people coming to my assistance.
Later the police told me that the area where the party was held was one of the worst crime neighbourhoods in Adelaide. Apparently people get mugged in broad daylight. So although the hall would have been dirt cheap at that time of night, it really isn't the right place to hold a LAN.
Even though the organisers also had someone steal a 24-port switch, they still wouldn't move the venue. They practically covered the incident up. The other gamers to this day are unaware of what happened and has probably happened pretty regularly since. The organisers did hire some security guards to guard the cars, but my friend who still attends that party tells me that his car got broken into the very next time he went.
So my advice to you is this: imagine how you would feel if one of your friends, or one of their friends, were mugged at knife-point. Or worse, if their computer were stolen. Then you will make the right decision about the venue and any security issues.
Don't be half-arsed about it, it's better to have less food and no theft, than for the majority to be happier while one person has a really rotten night.
A lot of money is going into rocket technology also; with this and the 'European version' of GPS are we heading towards a future conflict across the Atlantic?
I don't see why a group of countries, who were previously totally dependent on a distant country for a particular service (GPS), should cause a conflict when they eventually decide to do it for themselves.
Although considering the history, acknowledged or otherwise, of the US when it comes to these things, they will definitely be considering whether to allow this to go ahead. After all, you can't deny other countries access to space if there's another player willing to grant it. It's all about US freedoms, not everybody else's.
Stay tuned for more rampant cynicism the next time I respond to a post discussing conflict and the US!
You may recall that /. covered the ruling in favour of an Australian who was selling PS2 modchips. He still got caught on trademark infringement, but nevertheless modchipping a PS2 is now legal in this country.
Some quick googling turned up this link which pretty much explains the situation.
The DMCA can't touch us if we all live Down Under.
For a little while. Until we join the Coalition of the Willing-To-Suppress-Basic-Freedoms.
Although I can assure you from this point forth that I am a man, I thank you for the refreshing insight provided by your assumption that I'm not.
/. readers are men, but nevertheless it should be our goal to change our attitudes and assumptions about the gender of semi-anonymous writers. We owe it to humanity.
In fact, there isn't enough information in the initial post to determine my gender, yet up until now I haven't seen one person refer to me as she. So while there isn't any offence intended, we geeks are demonstrating that we're just as latently sexist as the rest of the world.
This would have something to do with the established fact that most
Just as we should strive to use free software, so too should we strive to be gender-neutral, lest a single woman or man be put off from becoming a geek.
Actually the NI GPIB drivers didn't look too bad OTOH, although I've been warned that they might not build under Linux 2.4, you may need 2.2. But porting 2.2 to 2.4 is usually pretty easy.
Fortunately the NI GPIB cards seem to use the same chips as their competitors, and that means you might be able to use any other GPIB driver. I've seen other GPIB card manufacturers who do give nice drivers.
The NI website, in a hidden corner, advertises that NI has Linux support. Then they link to Comedi. But you can be pretty sure they don't support Comedi in any way.
All I can say is you should be wary of NI's Linux support, and maybe they don't deserve your custom anyway if that's the only product with support. There are competitors who seem to be helpful, plus the cards are pretty similar. Maybe even NI's own Windows drivers will work on competitors' cards? (at least the ISA ones?)