HD are sold in GB with GB "defined" as 1,000,000,000 bytes, which is ~7.4% less than a real GB (2^30 bytes). After formatting, (depending on your FS) a extra few percent goes away for your file table, sector marker, directory structure, etc. so in real GB (in units of 2^30 bytes), it'll be a lot less than 160, or whatever your "bought" size.
Don't expect to recover those.
RAM is sold with truthful advertising. 128MB = 128*2^20 bytes, which is like 134,217,728 bytes - despite the 134, it's still 128MB.
ever mix a cup of oil and water? now - there is always a surface between the oil and water since they don't mix, but now, shake the darn thing up and a lot of "oil bubbles" will appear in the watery side, and vice versa. I am sure it will not be good for the optical qualities!
I also noticed that their prototype is extremely small - wouldn't a bigger one be subject to gravitational pull / buoyancy (in respect to eachother) of the liquids depending on lens orientation - and therefore causing a distortion to the optical surface?
interesting on the syncing quiescent states; because this is perfect for memory - you expect everything that you are about to receive; memory never interrupts the controllers; and all timing parameters are pre-determined. shy maybe maybe DQS and refresh, but not really so much.
this thing would be more painful to work on chip to chip communications since you don't know if the other chip is Z or the logic state you are receiving simply corresponded with your current driving logic state. (I suppose one can always send a enable / disable signal similar to DQS along with a dataline to indicated if it's active)
brilliant for use for memory though. (and i can see why it's a necessity for all connections to be point-to-point, no way this can be on any kind of bus.
as for needing special drivers, i would say that if the termination is term'd at vref=(Vh-Vh)/2, it helps the driver half way. That said, with the increasing usage of 50ohm / output impedance adjustable drivers on chips, maybe i am making it a bigger concern than it really is. Ahh we are no longer in the age of TTL that's for sure. =)
Actually it's more like RAMBUS has *been* dead ever since DDR / DDR2 became competitive in terms of prices.
Not just regurgitating history, though - I wonder if Intel will learn a lesson from RAMBUS's demise in regard to the new fangled transmission scheme*. RAMBUS died because it was 1) not open and 2) charged royalties. DRAM is such a low margin product that royalties will kill any possibility of your product hitting mass market (in RAMBUS's case, even with intel's backing - because none of memory manufactures liked it, so despite playing along they were really thinking of JEDEC and how to get DDR to be more popular / competitive). Intel, though, is probably doing this in a choke move for AMD, so it puts Intel at a tough decision point again: open standard = AMD can use it too, or RAMBUS version 2. That said, Intel isn't stupid, I am guessing their upcoming processors will be designed around a high memory bandwidth architecture to take advantage of it better than what competitors can. The low turnaround time (i.e. no bus turnaround!) is so sexy in a geeky way. circuit board designers are going to get soooo much headache over this though...
* the concept is indeed pretty cool, though you'll need some tough lil drivers that can handle incoming voltage swings while it's driving. The power dissipation on these I/O buffers are key, but in reality these things already exist, of course - just a bit pricy.
* when cutting the ingots, people almost ALWAYS use a ring-blade; where the blade is on the inner edge of a ring larger than the ingot, and ingot is sliced. extra points for anyone who know why.**
* ingots are not always "grown." (think dipping candles) there is also a technique where you start off with a polychrystaline ingot and use localized heating to progressively monocrystalize it by localized melting. The technique is similar to one of the methods of removing impurities from iron bars.
* CMP is damn cool. I mean, it's nice and all hearing about "polish to within an atom" precision, but if you take a polished wafer, it would make the best mirror you'd ever own. Granted silicon is not the perfect reflective surface, but you won't get a mirror more accuratly shows every feature on your face. =) Otoh, when dusts and stuff DO get into the CMP machines, though, it scratches the wafer. Though you don't see it, when you trace failures on the wafer the failing gates would generally follow an arc shape (corresponding to the wafer and polishing head rotation), and from that you get the CMP machine checked out.
random junk I thought that was kinda neat.
** I used to know about 3 years ago but then I forgot. so don't expect like a correct answer or nothing.
The airport maglev is kinda interesting in the way that nobody actually rides it.
Price conscious people takes the bus to major transportation hubs, and convenience / time consicous people takes the taxi (which is only like 15 dollars compared to 10 dollars that the maglev costs - besides the point that the other end station is nowhere near the city and you have to take a cab anyway so it's not that much faster)
so, after a buttload of money, it's not making any of it back except wow points - it might be worth it for an airport shuttle, but you'd bet money has everything to do with it.
that said, I am still taking it in a few days just for the wow factor - but after that it's all taxi since it's so cheap.
For people who has not been to Japan, rent "Serial Experiment Lain" to get an idea of what overhanging wires in japan looks like. luckily people are sane enough (or at lease shy enough, anyway) to not dry their meat on the lines; but one of my commuting routes passes a road that above it is nothing but juxopositions sy shards of visible sky, cut into pieces by wires going every which way.
but when you dont have the chance to burry things, i guess it's inevitable. (side note, after earthquakes japan tends to use the rebuild phase as a chance to organize some of this stuff, which is neat)
On this part I have to contest. The current government *WAS* most definitely chosen by the people. During WW2 neither the nationalists (who now fled to Taiwan, to the dismay of many native taiwanese), nor the (supposedly) allied friends (say, the US), did very much to stop the invasion from Japan, and it was - have to give credit where credit is due - Mao Tse Tung and the revolutionary army that basically preserved China from becoming gutted by Japan and western forces.
Now, I do not condone a good deal of things that happened afterwards - cultural revolution, Tian-an-men square, amongst others; However, the communist party rose to power in many ways the US gained independence: they had the interest of the people in mind, and consequentially was awarded with the people's support.
Eventually, governments have this tendency to lose track of this original purpose, but I don't see how it is much better in the US than it is in China, actually - Constitution or not, if the US government wants to f*** you, they'll simply ship you somewhere that the constitution doesn't apply. (Cuba anyone?)
Or heck any of the sandwiches they sell in convenience stores and supermarkets (most all of which only uses the white part of the bread) - because well, temaki is kinda expensive; so from a dollar / calorie (erm, yen / kilojoule, maybe) perspective, temaki is pretty damn inefficient.
The parent post is pertinent - or at least related - to the discussion of Penny Arcade.
This user forms an opinion about Penny Arcade. Even though I do not necessarily agree with this opinion or can imagine there are more than a handful of people who shares this opinion, using one's moderation privledge to strifle his opinion isn't a right things to do.
(I get a feeling i might get modded to oblivion for this, but I got karma to burn)
What I mean is that - take for example, a simple javascript menu system that doesn't look like every other yahoo-storefront; everybody knows such a feature exists in uncountable websites on the web. So, if you are buliding a site, you'd probably think about putting one in there, and if you are looking at somebody's site, you'd feel kinda weird if they didn't have some something that catchy that happens onMouseOver.
So, actually the STANDARD to which we judge websites have gone up; a lot - and to make your site look comparable to all the others that have millions invested into them is a herculian task. And nasty animated gifs and bg music won't really fix this; creating original graphic is time consuming, and creating good ones are near impossible especially if you are a newcomer. Integrating your graphics into some custom javascript menus and then debugging it in three browsers? well shit, that's a month work right there.
So, yes, creative mind is cool and good, but to carry out all these creative designing, a whole lot of HTML hacking* has to take place, because a gopher-style page just isn't quite up to the standard of being respectable anymore - of course unless you have lots of information that's really the driving force. But now, we are talking about personal sites, your cats are only so interesting compared to every other cat with pictures online.
*probably also some (lots of?) perl / javascript / php / lisp if you are really fond of parentecies hacking if you want anything that would be sorta kinda dynamic.
I think personal websites are cool back in the day when... well, HTML isn't so complicated, and the average website is a few tables with a few pictures.
now, if you would just look at the mountains of shit you'd have to sift through to make a site (try webmonkey.com), it's unreal! Just to make a simple but reasonblly respectable* site would need two years of university education if you never done it before.
And what I mean by respectable is that - on average, websites have became much more feature rich, the graphics much better, the content more frequently updated, etc. That little website you used to use as a homepage that's hacked up in an afternoon looks by today's standards simply pathetic - and people know this. They fudge around with building a site and then find out, man this is a lot of work and not worth it.
Besides, there are millions of places online where you can do exactly what you would have be doing on your own site anyway - I keep my journal on slashdot; I get a whole comment feedback system without having had to muck with CGI code / HTML / site design / debugging / server troubleshooting, and so on. Now, eventually I would like to port it to something myself just to have a little more control over it, but really, even if I think about it now, it's not worth the trouble - and keeping a blog online would be exactly the same thing I'd be doing if I had my website, so this simply removes a lot of the hassle.
So, similarly as people don't all do the painting / maintenance of their home by themselves, website I think comes the same way - it's the tradeoff between convenience of something prepackaged (weblog sites, say) vs something custom, and the amount of effort needed for that little custom isn't always worthwhile in all cases.
I was browsing the 760/650 at Tokyo (ha! isn't it great to be in japan?), and you just have to be impressed by the 200pixel-per-inch (i think higher than that, actually) resolution on the screen. It is very difficult (if possible at all) to notice the individual pixels, so the graphics look very sharp (really, no pun).
Have to see it to be a believer though - but nontheless I am not plucking down 600 dollars on a toy that I know I won't use very much.
For the same money I can get an FZ-10 (panasonic lumix camera), or even a sanyo SD based video camcorder (about the size of a motorola startac phone folded, 5.6x optical resolution etc) - either of which would get a LOT more use.
However, a zaurus PDA is definitely on top of the "stuff I will buy if I win the lottery" list.
you can get a logitech pocket digital for like 37 dollars; basically same specs, but looks a whole lot nicer and does exactly the same thing - except maybe actually storing more pictures on the internal memory. With parts and time invested, I think it is more than worth the 26 dollars difference.
Yes i know there is the geek "i hacked my cheap-ass camera" factor, but come on... if you want to be a geek, there are more worthwhile projects on which to spend your time!
i dunno about you guys but 10 meters isn't exactly a short distance... I would suspect for some things, data taking and what not, coming within 33 feet is actually expected.
anyway... not that you'd probably do it frequently - however since they don't have a clue WHAT exactly the sound level is, I'd think it wouldn't be a bad idea to do a real measurement and establish some safety parameters - OSHA would be like collectively fainting if this was an work-environment that an employer subjecting their employees to (i.e. don't have any idea what sound is coming off that engine).
Does it make a lot of noise?
Yes. Our sound level meter goes off the scale of 138 dBA at 10 meters. However, during test flights people on the ground have noted that it is quieter than many jet aircraft they have heard.
oh... really? have these people on the ground checked their hearing after long-term exposure to whatever noise that's abusing their ears???
the BEST earmuffs do a -29dB cut, and that means even wearing that, the grount crew can expect over 109dB (since we don't know how much, it's off the scale right?) exposure...
even wearing earplugs AND a earmuff, you still are pushing ~ >79dB - and earplug + muff doesn't actually give you -60dB.
besides... the ratings are only at certain frequencies; some -29dB muffs are as ineffective as -16dB only for lower frequencies.
it's a 509GHz *TRANSISTOR*, not a chip. even for the transistors on a P4, they also operate at a "speed" much faster than the actual chip operations - after all, to squeeze 3+ GHz out of a chip, which has tons of gates connected one after another, isn't exactly a "everybody switch at once" deal.
besides, for real high speed stuff people are moving toward serial on PCB anyway, parallel just doesn't work anymore past a certain point due to the increased capacitance that's caused by traces getting tighter with eachother (need more traces for more pins)...
Almost all (i'd wager to say "all" but there might be some tiny companies i don't know about) FPGA manufactures include serdes (serializer / deserializer) ports on their chips, usually more than one - those go at 6+GHz (faster ones due out are 10GHz), but PCB still handles that because it's only a few pins compared to, a DDR bus.
That it's ok for companies to push for draconian laws and regulations, but as long as they toss you some table scrap in the form of "accidentally leaked" maintenance backdoors, you are ok with it?
With these laws, at a whim the companies can bust you for whatever the hell they felt like - say if you posted some bad reviews on their service department and they can put you in jail for 8 years because you circumvented their whatever bullshit on the DVD players you bought half a decade ago. Hey, it can happen.
Besides, what happens when a company doesn't even throw you the scraps that is so important for your esoteric idea of balance? I still can't watch my US DVDs on my Japanese playstation. On the other hand, if I bought my DVDs (pirated copies) from, say, HongKong or China, they would be completely region free - give me one good reason why I should have to put up with bullshit like paying 10-20x the price for the lovely inconvenience of region coding? - I mean, fsck, I would be breaking the law either way right?
As somebody who works with soldering more than he wants to - I can tell you that paper isn't such a impossible item to solder onto (provided that the conductive ink bonds to solder)
Anyhoo - if you don't go crazy with the heat, paper doesn't even char. Going with 450 degrees (celcius here) will char your paper if you leave the tip on long enough, but due to the high heat-insulation properties of paper, you should never need to do it in the first place.
The problem is actually the heat-insulation property: molten solder does not solidify half as fast on paper as they do on PCB. Of course, this comes back to the "go easy on the temperature dial" thing mentioned earlier, but if not careful it can be annoying. It is even half fun to drip some molten solder on a sheet of paper - you can roll it around while it's liquid (This is, without saying, dangerous - so perform at your own risk).
So, I don't see this being terribly problematic. Print multiple sheets and use rivets as via will get you multi-layered circuits. Of course - I wouldn't expect the traces to be beautiful 50-ohm lines, but I doubt you will be putting any 10GHz serdes chips on there either, eh?
p.s. use of surface mount components will be HIGHLY recommended.
ad hominem eh? That's a joke at the end of the logical part of the arguments, thanks for not getting it.
But honestly, though - point out one place where you have been able to find some reasons to believe that my analysis regarding temperature / pressure concerns are faluty - besides that "Carmack is running the project so he must know what's going on."
I concur that he runs the project, and I most adamantly concur that he knows many times more about his project than me - but concerns remains concerns until there are reasons to believe that they are not; and blind faith in the project members (sorry, but firm belief in something without logical / technical backup is exactly that - blind faith) isn't one of those reasons.
the ignition mechanism being buried far up in the engine does not exempt it from being affected by temperature or pressure changes in the outside environment. catalyst blocks are not magical air barriers that will keep the pressure at the ingintion point at 1ATM.
Worse yet, the catalyst blocks ARE part of the ignition system - if they are too cold the fuel does not ignite, which is the source of their problems in the first place. when the air temperature drops to -50C at 30k ft, how do you know the catalyst blocks will heat up / heat up fast enough?
I won't even start to mention possible effects of temperature fluctuations due to the vehicle's motion through the atmosphere (depending on speed, it would either heat up or draw heat away faster).
And as much respect as I have for Carmack, I cannot say that (from what I read) his program is based on exhausive testing - it more seems like "let's try if this works better than that" approach. Nothing wrong with the approach, but it usually only tests a limited set of operating conditions because you do not foresee / simulate beforehand all the possible operating ranges and conditions.
So, I am glad they have blind (erm, faithful) followers like you, but hey, I am just concerned about their safty.
Slashdot Mirror
but in case you are not:
HD are sold in GB with GB "defined" as 1,000,000,000 bytes, which is ~7.4% less than a real GB (2^30 bytes). After formatting, (depending on your FS) a extra few percent goes away for your file table, sector marker, directory structure, etc. so in real GB (in units of 2^30 bytes), it'll be a lot less than 160, or whatever your "bought" size.
Don't expect to recover those.
RAM is sold with truthful advertising. 128MB = 128*2^20 bytes, which is like 134,217,728 bytes - despite the 134, it's still 128MB.
ever mix a cup of oil and water? now - there is always a surface between the oil and water since they don't mix, but now, shake the darn thing up and a lot of "oil bubbles" will appear in the watery side, and vice versa. I am sure it will not be good for the optical qualities!
I also noticed that their prototype is extremely small - wouldn't a bigger one be subject to gravitational pull / buoyancy (in respect to eachother) of the liquids depending on lens orientation - and therefore causing a distortion to the optical surface?
interesting on the syncing quiescent states; because this is perfect for memory - you expect everything that you are about to receive; memory never interrupts the controllers; and all timing parameters are pre-determined. shy maybe maybe DQS and refresh, but not really so much.
this thing would be more painful to work on chip to chip communications since you don't know if the other chip is Z or the logic state you are receiving simply corresponded with your current driving logic state. (I suppose one can always send a enable / disable signal similar to DQS along with a dataline to indicated if it's active)
brilliant for use for memory though. (and i can see why it's a necessity for all connections to be point-to-point, no way this can be on any kind of bus.
as for needing special drivers, i would say that if the termination is term'd at vref=(Vh-Vh)/2, it helps the driver half way. That said, with the increasing usage of 50ohm / output impedance adjustable drivers on chips, maybe i am making it a bigger concern than it really is. Ahh we are no longer in the age of TTL that's for sure. =)
Actually it's more like RAMBUS has *been* dead ever since DDR / DDR2 became competitive in terms of prices.
Not just regurgitating history, though - I wonder if Intel will learn a lesson from RAMBUS's demise in regard to the new fangled transmission scheme*. RAMBUS died because it was 1) not open and 2) charged royalties. DRAM is such a low margin product that royalties will kill any possibility of your product hitting mass market (in RAMBUS's case, even with intel's backing - because none of memory manufactures liked it, so despite playing along they were really thinking of JEDEC and how to get DDR to be more popular / competitive). Intel, though, is probably doing this in a choke move for AMD, so it puts Intel at a tough decision point again: open standard = AMD can use it too, or RAMBUS version 2. That said, Intel isn't stupid, I am guessing their upcoming processors will be designed around a high memory bandwidth architecture to take advantage of it better than what competitors can. The low turnaround time (i.e. no bus turnaround!) is so sexy in a geeky way. circuit board designers are going to get soooo much headache over this though...
* the concept is indeed pretty cool, though you'll need some tough lil drivers that can handle incoming voltage swings while it's driving. The power dissipation on these I/O buffers are key, but in reality these things already exist, of course - just a bit pricy.
hmm I thought my explanation is a bit inadequate.
Imagine Xena's little tossing ring thing. Xena's tossing ring thing has the blade edge on the outer edge of the ring.
reverse that, and put the blade on the INNER edge of the ring.
make sure diameter of inner edge is larger than ingot diameter.
put ingot through the center of the inner-blade ring cutter.
proceed to cut.
image here? ttp://www.atock.com/newproducts/
The inner black area is the blade. stick what you want to cut through the hole and proceed to cut.
* when cutting the ingots, people almost ALWAYS use a ring-blade; where the blade is on the inner edge of a ring larger than the ingot, and ingot is sliced. extra points for anyone who know why.**
* ingots are not always "grown." (think dipping candles) there is also a technique where you start off with a polychrystaline ingot and use localized heating to progressively monocrystalize it by localized melting. The technique is similar to one of the methods of removing impurities from iron bars.
* CMP is damn cool. I mean, it's nice and all hearing about "polish to within an atom" precision, but if you take a polished wafer, it would make the best mirror you'd ever own. Granted silicon is not the perfect reflective surface, but you won't get a mirror more accuratly shows every feature on your face. =) Otoh, when dusts and stuff DO get into the CMP machines, though, it scratches the wafer. Though you don't see it, when you trace failures on the wafer the failing gates would generally follow an arc shape (corresponding to the wafer and polishing head rotation), and from that you get the CMP machine checked out.
random junk I thought that was kinda neat.
** I used to know about 3 years ago but then I forgot. so don't expect like a correct answer or nothing.
Funny I am writing from Shanghai at this moment.
The airport maglev is kinda interesting in the way that nobody actually rides it.
Price conscious people takes the bus to major transportation hubs, and convenience / time consicous people takes the taxi (which is only like 15 dollars compared to 10 dollars that the maglev costs - besides the point that the other end station is nowhere near the city and you have to take a cab anyway so it's not that much faster)
so, after a buttload of money, it's not making any of it back except wow points - it might be worth it for an airport shuttle, but you'd bet money has everything to do with it.
that said, I am still taking it in a few days just for the wow factor - but after that it's all taxi since it's so cheap.
please?
For people who has not been to Japan, rent "Serial Experiment Lain" to get an idea of what overhanging wires in japan looks like. luckily people are sane enough (or at lease shy enough, anyway) to not dry their meat on the lines; but one of my commuting routes passes a road that above it is nothing but juxopositions sy shards of visible sky, cut into pieces by wires going every which way.
but when you dont have the chance to burry things, i guess it's inevitable. (side note, after earthquakes japan tends to use the rebuild phase as a chance to organize some of this stuff, which is neat)
On this part I have to contest. The current government *WAS* most definitely chosen by the people. During WW2 neither the nationalists (who now fled to Taiwan, to the dismay of many native taiwanese), nor the (supposedly) allied friends (say, the US), did very much to stop the invasion from Japan, and it was - have to give credit where credit is due - Mao Tse Tung and the revolutionary army that basically preserved China from becoming gutted by Japan and western forces.
Now, I do not condone a good deal of things that happened afterwards - cultural revolution, Tian-an-men square, amongst others; However, the communist party rose to power in many ways the US gained independence: they had the interest of the people in mind, and consequentially was awarded with the people's support.
Eventually, governments have this tendency to lose track of this original purpose, but I don't see how it is much better in the US than it is in China, actually - Constitution or not, if the US government wants to f*** you, they'll simply ship you somewhere that the constitution doesn't apply. (Cuba anyone?)
I was actually gonna say MOS burger...
Or heck any of the sandwiches they sell in convenience stores and supermarkets (most all of which only uses the white part of the bread) - because well, temaki is kinda expensive; so from a dollar / calorie (erm, yen / kilojoule, maybe) perspective, temaki is pretty damn inefficient.
Otherwise I'd be eating it more.
The parent post is pertinent - or at least related - to the discussion of Penny Arcade.
This user forms an opinion about Penny Arcade. Even though I do not necessarily agree with this opinion or can imagine there are more than a handful of people who shares this opinion, using one's moderation privledge to strifle his opinion isn't a right things to do.
(I get a feeling i might get modded to oblivion for this, but I got karma to burn)
hmm... thought somebody would bring that up.
What I mean is that - take for example, a simple javascript menu system that doesn't look like every other yahoo-storefront; everybody knows such a feature exists in uncountable websites on the web. So, if you are buliding a site, you'd probably think about putting one in there, and if you are looking at somebody's site, you'd feel kinda weird if they didn't have some something that catchy that happens onMouseOver.
So, actually the STANDARD to which we judge websites have gone up; a lot - and to make your site look comparable to all the others that have millions invested into them is a herculian task. And nasty animated gifs and bg music won't really fix this; creating original graphic is time consuming, and creating good ones are near impossible especially if you are a newcomer. Integrating your graphics into some custom javascript menus and then debugging it in three browsers? well shit, that's a month work right there.
So, yes, creative mind is cool and good, but to carry out all these creative designing, a whole lot of HTML hacking* has to take place, because a gopher-style page just isn't quite up to the standard of being respectable anymore - of course unless you have lots of information that's really the driving force. But now, we are talking about personal sites, your cats are only so interesting compared to every other cat with pictures online.
*probably also some (lots of?) perl / javascript / php / lisp if you are really fond of parentecies hacking if you want anything that would be sorta kinda dynamic.
not. worth. the. trouble.
I think personal websites are cool back in the day when... well, HTML isn't so complicated, and the average website is a few tables with a few pictures.
now, if you would just look at the mountains of shit you'd have to sift through to make a site (try webmonkey.com), it's unreal! Just to make a simple but reasonblly respectable* site would need two years of university education if you never done it before.
And what I mean by respectable is that - on average, websites have became much more feature rich, the graphics much better, the content more frequently updated, etc. That little website you used to use as a homepage that's hacked up in an afternoon looks by today's standards simply pathetic - and people know this. They fudge around with building a site and then find out, man this is a lot of work and not worth it.
Besides, there are millions of places online where you can do exactly what you would have be doing on your own site anyway - I keep my journal on slashdot; I get a whole comment feedback system without having had to muck with CGI code / HTML / site design / debugging / server troubleshooting, and so on. Now, eventually I would like to port it to something myself just to have a little more control over it, but really, even if I think about it now, it's not worth the trouble - and keeping a blog online would be exactly the same thing I'd be doing if I had my website, so this simply removes a lot of the hassle.
So, similarly as people don't all do the painting / maintenance of their home by themselves, website I think comes the same way - it's the tradeoff between convenience of something prepackaged (weblog sites, say) vs something custom, and the amount of effort needed for that little custom isn't always worthwhile in all cases.
I was browsing the 760/650 at Tokyo (ha! isn't it great to be in japan?), and you just have to be impressed by the 200pixel-per-inch (i think higher than that, actually) resolution on the screen. It is very difficult (if possible at all) to notice the individual pixels, so the graphics look very sharp (really, no pun).
Have to see it to be a believer though - but nontheless I am not plucking down 600 dollars on a toy that I know I won't use very much.
For the same money I can get an FZ-10 (panasonic lumix camera), or even a sanyo SD based video camcorder (about the size of a motorola startac phone folded, 5.6x optical resolution etc) - either of which would get a LOT more use.
However, a zaurus PDA is definitely on top of the "stuff I will buy if I win the lottery" list.
it's a fairly crappy camera; for 11 dollars.
you can get a logitech pocket digital for like 37 dollars; basically same specs, but looks a whole lot nicer and does exactly the same thing - except maybe actually storing more pictures on the internal memory.
With parts and time invested, I think it is more than worth the 26 dollars difference.
Yes i know there is the geek "i hacked my cheap-ass camera" factor, but come on... if you want to be a geek, there are more worthwhile projects on which to spend your time!
i dunno about you guys but 10 meters isn't exactly a short distance... I would suspect for some things, data taking and what not, coming within 33 feet is actually expected.
anyway... not that you'd probably do it frequently - however since they don't have a clue WHAT exactly the sound level is, I'd think it wouldn't be a bad idea to do a real measurement and establish some safety parameters - OSHA would be like collectively fainting if this was an work-environment that an employer subjecting their employees to (i.e. don't have any idea what sound is coming off that engine).
Yes. Our sound level meter goes off the scale of 138 dBA at 10 meters. However, during test flights people on the ground have noted that it is quieter than many jet aircraft they have heard.
oh... really? have these people on the ground checked their hearing after long-term exposure to whatever noise that's abusing their ears???
the BEST earmuffs do a -29dB cut, and that means even wearing that, the grount crew can expect over 109dB (since we don't know how much, it's off the scale right?) exposure...
even wearing earplugs AND a earmuff, you still are pushing ~ >79dB - and earplug + muff doesn't actually give you -60dB.
besides... the ratings are only at certain frequencies; some -29dB muffs are as ineffective as -16dB only for lower frequencies.
hmm... if you use differential pair and bury it between layers of power / gnd planes (and surround it by the same), it's not AS bad...
yes yes I know it's still a pain, but I don't think it's the end of world as people seem to make it sound like; tis all.
it's a 509GHz *TRANSISTOR*, not a chip. even for the transistors on a P4, they also operate at a "speed" much faster than the actual chip operations - after all, to squeeze 3+ GHz out of a chip, which has tons of gates connected one after another, isn't exactly a "everybody switch at once" deal.
besides, for real high speed stuff people are moving toward serial on PCB anyway, parallel just doesn't work anymore past a certain point due to the increased capacitance that's caused by traces getting tighter with eachother (need more traces for more pins)...
Almost all (i'd wager to say "all" but there might be some tiny companies i don't know about) FPGA manufactures include serdes (serializer / deserializer) ports on their chips, usually more than one - those go at 6+GHz (faster ones due out are 10GHz), but PCB still handles that because it's only a few pins compared to, a DDR bus.
That it's ok for companies to push for draconian laws and regulations, but as long as they toss you some table scrap in the form of "accidentally leaked" maintenance backdoors, you are ok with it?
With these laws, at a whim the companies can bust you for whatever the hell they felt like - say if you posted some bad reviews on their service department and they can put you in jail for 8 years because you circumvented their whatever bullshit on the DVD players you bought half a decade ago. Hey, it can happen.
Besides, what happens when a company doesn't even throw you the scraps that is so important for your esoteric idea of balance? I still can't watch my US DVDs on my Japanese playstation. On the other hand, if I bought my DVDs (pirated copies) from, say, HongKong or China, they would be completely region free - give me one good reason why I should have to put up with bullshit like paying 10-20x the price for the lovely inconvenience of region coding? - I mean, fsck, I would be breaking the law either way right?
The very first thing I would do if I had a quantum computer is to crack the XBOX key. (I assume I am not alone here)
So, wouldn't quantum computers altogether be banned under DMCA?
As somebody who works with soldering more than he wants to - I can tell you that paper isn't such a impossible item to solder onto (provided that the conductive ink bonds to solder)
Anyhoo - if you don't go crazy with the heat, paper doesn't even char. Going with 450 degrees (celcius here) will char your paper if you leave the tip on long enough, but due to the high heat-insulation properties of paper, you should never need to do it in the first place.
The problem is actually the heat-insulation property: molten solder does not solidify half as fast on paper as they do on PCB. Of course, this comes back to the "go easy on the temperature dial" thing mentioned earlier, but if not careful it can be annoying. It is even half fun to drip some molten solder on a sheet of paper - you can roll it around while it's liquid (This is, without saying, dangerous - so perform at your own risk).
So, I don't see this being terribly problematic. Print multiple sheets and use rivets as via will get you multi-layered circuits. Of course - I wouldn't expect the traces to be beautiful 50-ohm lines, but I doubt you will be putting any 10GHz serdes chips on there either, eh?
p.s. use of surface mount components will be HIGHLY recommended.
ha ha
ad hominem eh? That's a joke at the end of the logical part of the arguments, thanks for not getting it.
But honestly, though - point out one place where you have been able to find some reasons to believe that my analysis regarding temperature / pressure concerns are faluty - besides that "Carmack is running the project so he must know what's going on."
I concur that he runs the project, and I most adamantly concur that he knows many times more about his project than me - but concerns remains concerns until there are reasons to believe that they are not; and blind faith in the project members (sorry, but firm belief in something without logical / technical backup is exactly that - blind faith) isn't one of those reasons.
the ignition mechanism being buried far up in the engine does not exempt it from being affected by temperature or pressure changes in the outside environment. catalyst blocks are not magical air barriers that will keep the pressure at the ingintion point at 1ATM.
Worse yet, the catalyst blocks ARE part of the ignition system - if they are too cold the fuel does not ignite, which is the source of their problems in the first place. when the air temperature drops to -50C at 30k ft, how do you know the catalyst blocks will heat up / heat up fast enough?
I won't even start to mention possible effects of temperature fluctuations due to the vehicle's motion through the atmosphere (depending on speed, it would either heat up or draw heat away faster).
And as much respect as I have for Carmack, I cannot say that (from what I read) his program is based on exhausive testing - it more seems like "let's try if this works better than that" approach. Nothing wrong with the approach, but it usually only tests a limited set of operating conditions because you do not foresee / simulate beforehand all the possible operating ranges and conditions.
So, I am glad they have blind (erm, faithful) followers like you, but hey, I am just concerned about their safty.