I played quite a bit with H.323 voip via 802.11b, and found that as the article states, it is possible to enjoy quality equal to or superior to a standard telephone call. I was using IP phones rather than the softphone package the students were given.
The price for quality is latency. You need a fairly large buffer to compensate for wireless' retries. I was able to get it to work pretty well, but if the buffer was too large, it was reminiscent of a cell phone call with just enough delay to make you talk all over the other person.
I settled on a 16 kb/s codec and a 250 ms buffer as a good balance between performance and sound quality, and I never had complaints on that front.
Off grid, off the coast of Maine on an island with an external directional antenna plugged into one end of my Nokia 6310i and a solar panel plugged into the other end, I enjoyed uninterrupted data service via AT&Ts GPRS service. I used the infrared port on the phone to link to my laptop. Didn't want to spend the $$$ for a Bluetooth adapter.
Caveat 1 - No unlimited data service plan yet.
Caveat 2 - You get a NAT address 10.x.x.x rather than a routable IP address - so have that VPN ready on your cable modem.
Caveat 3 - Windows based AT&T software that filters ads, compresses graphics and manages dialup. You don't absolutely need it, but it is a big help.
Caveat 4 - Pro-rating of the monthly service charge also pro-rated my data allotment. I went over and was charged much extra $$$.
How long could one of these weapons stay viable? They said that the Halfnium component has a 31 year half life. I bet the weapon becomes non-viable long before that.
In one sense that is good. Proliferation of this weapon might not be as much of a long term threat. When the support infrastructure is removed, the weapon might decay rapidly enough to mitigate proliferation issues when compared to Plutonium and Uranium.
Cool, but does it bounce?
on
Garmin iQue 3600
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
My old Garmin GPS MAP12xl may only be greyscale, and twice the weight, but it is also water resistant and runs for many many hours on alkaline AA batteries. And it bounces.
For any serious usage, such as boating or hiking, this frail-looking unit might not be a very good idea. Ever seen a palm with a shattered screen?
I have an antique Chevrolet that I enjoy puttering around with. I have owned several Jeeps and other fine junkers as well.
Tuning an engine is a very "analog" experience. You just kind of feel when it is right. Listen to the idle, smell the exhaust, feel the acceleration. All very fulfilling.
A fluorescent bulb emits UV internally which is converted to visible light by the phosphors on the inside of the glass.
Interesting idea, but putting any computer equipment on a switched outlet is not real bright (ha). If you are rewiring the lights to have a seperate switch, then you don't need this anyhow.
When I found myself in an uncontrollable decent down a certain snow covered hill, I activated my backup deceleration system too. I aimed for a snowbank and hit the gas.
Though my landing was rough, the passengers and craft were both salvageable. Sounds rather similar to this decent.
This article shed some light on a different subject as well.
The typical American unit of area, the football field converts to the Canadian (metric?) unit of area, the hockey rink with a ratio of 6000hr/1600ff or 3.75 to 1
And how many miles to the acre/hour does your car get? Could you support California's fuel needs if you dedicated all of Nebraska to biodiesel production?
If I recall correctly, water can be heated to the point where it disociates into H & O rather than just superheated H20. Couldn't we then seperate them by charge difference?
It may not be worth the inefficiency and I don't have time for the googling right now.
Give me a nuke plant over coal any day. Give me a practical solar H plant on my roof that doesn't cost $100K and I will think about it.
Nobody ever mentions nuclear power in relation to hydrogen manufacture. It is undoubtedly in the back of some people's minds but they dare not mention it for fear of alienating many of the very people that support hydrogen.
Now I am not advocating the proliferation of today's (really yesterday's) messy fission plants but let's support research into modern nuclear technologies be they fusion or fission.
I have an off-grid camp and desired safe and efficient lighting. I loathe fluorescent light.
So I have a small (300 ma) solar panel charging a 12 Volt gel cell that I salvaged from a UPS.
Rather than use resistors or a dc-dc converter, I wired the LEDs in series. I made strings of 5 LEDs and wired the strings in parallel. (think christmas lights) Peak voltage on my circuit can be > 14.8v
Hints: The light was extremely white/blue so I made some yellow strings and mixed them in. Cheaper that way too.
I used a cheap wirewound potentiometer as a dimmer because it was too bright for night reading.
I made the electrical connections into a self-supporting frame for the LEDs rather than using a backing material. That means the clear LEDs and fine wires disappear into the background. When it is off it is nearly invisible.
The LEDs I used (Hewlett packard, purchased from Newark Electronics) are extremely focused and directional. It took some careful aiming of the individual elements to get a good spread. You might consider a diffusor.
Good luck, and I will be happy to answer questions if you have any.
Next time I make some, I am going to make seperate red, green and blue circuits so I can tune the color balance.
They were supposed to protect us from crap science. Then they were disbanded.
I guess REAL science is just too hard to deal with. It rudely remains the same no matter how much wishful thinking or political pressure is brought to bear.
Mumbo jumbo pseudo-science is much easier to deal with. It is whatever you want it to be. It changes whenever the political expedient demands.
boy oh boy, after a hard day of pounding a square peg operating system into round hole hardware, nothing cools me off like a dairy based beverage from the makers of Dr. Pepper.
Slashdot Mirror
I would be interested in knowing how the Segway get's it's software upgrade.
Perhaps the XBox team could come up with a Linux distro for it.
Imaging a Beowulf cluster of Segways all rolling down the street in perfect synchrony.
I played quite a bit with H.323 voip via 802.11b, and found that as the article states, it is possible to enjoy quality equal to or superior to a standard telephone call. I was using IP phones rather than the softphone package the students were given.
The price for quality is latency. You need a fairly large buffer to compensate for wireless' retries. I was able to get it to work pretty well, but if the buffer was too large, it was reminiscent of a cell phone call with just enough delay to make you talk all over the other person.
I settled on a 16 kb/s codec and a 250 ms buffer as a good balance between performance and sound quality, and I never had complaints on that front.
-j
Off grid, off the coast of Maine on an island with an external directional antenna plugged into one end of my Nokia 6310i and a solar panel plugged into the other end, I enjoyed uninterrupted data service via AT&Ts GPRS service.
I used the infrared port on the phone to link to my laptop. Didn't want to spend the $$$ for a Bluetooth adapter.
Caveat 1 - No unlimited data service plan yet.
Caveat 2 - You get a NAT address 10.x.x.x rather than a routable IP address - so have that VPN ready on your cable modem.
Caveat 3 - Windows based AT&T software that filters ads, compresses graphics and manages dialup. You don't absolutely need it, but it is a big help.
Caveat 4 - Pro-rating of the monthly service charge also pro-rated my data allotment. I went over and was charged much extra $$$.
All that being said, It worked quite well.
-j
How long could one of these weapons stay viable?
They said that the Halfnium component has a 31 year half life. I bet the weapon becomes non-viable long before that.
In one sense that is good. Proliferation of this weapon might not be as much of a long term threat. When the support infrastructure is removed, the weapon might decay rapidly enough to mitigate proliferation issues when compared to Plutonium and Uranium.
My old Garmin GPS MAP12xl may only be greyscale, and twice the weight, but it is also water resistant and runs for many many hours on alkaline AA batteries. And it bounces.
For any serious usage, such as boating or hiking, this frail-looking unit might not be a very good idea. Ever seen a palm with a shattered screen?
Energizer ACCU NiMH cells probably last 60% as long as a standard alkaline battery in my palm pilot, but with 2 sets I can always be powered up.
You do need a NiMH specific charger though.
4 AAA cells and the charger paid for themselves within a year and they are still going strong.
NiCD is worthless.
-j-
I have an antique Chevrolet that I enjoy puttering around with. I have owned several Jeeps and other fine junkers as well.
Tuning an engine is a very "analog" experience. You just kind of feel when it is right. Listen to the idle, smell the exhaust, feel the acceleration. All very fulfilling.
-j
A fluorescent bulb emits UV internally which is converted to visible light by the phosphors on the inside of the glass.
Interesting idea, but putting any computer equipment on a switched outlet is not real bright (ha). If you are rewiring the lights to have a seperate switch, then you don't need this anyhow.
-jake
When I found myself in an uncontrollable decent down a certain snow covered hill, I activated my backup deceleration system too. I aimed for a snowbank and hit the gas.
Though my landing was rough, the passengers and craft were both salvageable. Sounds rather similar to this decent.
I just saw a stack of Copper Mountain and Cisco DSL gear sell for 20 cents on the dollar.
I went 12 weeks without a nibble, then had three offers in February. Then nothing.
Screw the unemployment checks, I took the job.
-j
Not standard otc stuff, it is made to kill bacteria on the surface so the sample is unadultrated.
This article shed some light on a different subject as well.
The typical American unit of area, the football field converts to the Canadian (metric?) unit of area, the hockey rink with a ratio of 6000hr/1600ff or 3.75 to 1
Very helpful information.
Bender the robot uses Ethanol for power. A couple bottles of 'Old Fortran' kept him going for hours.
Now if I could only run my cell phone off of cigarettes, we could re-purpose the entire vice industry. We all know how useful hemp is too...
"Tin cans could be removed by magnets and sent for recycling"
Will wonders never cease!
-j
yeah, but then I can't own it. I'll put up a few more square feet of collector instead.
And how many miles to the acre/hour does your car get? Could you support California's fuel needs if you dedicated all of Nebraska to biodiesel production?
If I recall correctly, water can be heated to the point where it disociates into H & O rather than just superheated H20. Couldn't we then seperate them by charge difference?
It may not be worth the inefficiency and I don't have time for the googling right now.
Give me a nuke plant over coal any day. Give me a practical solar H plant on my roof that doesn't cost $100K and I will think about it.
-j
Nobody ever mentions nuclear power in relation to hydrogen manufacture. It is undoubtedly in the back of some people's minds but they dare not mention it for fear of alienating many of the very people that support hydrogen.
Now I am not advocating the proliferation of today's (really yesterday's) messy fission plants but let's support research into modern nuclear technologies be they fusion or fission.
Nuclear CAN be clean. Give it a chance.
I have an off-grid camp and desired safe and efficient lighting. I loathe fluorescent light.
So I have a small (300 ma) solar panel charging a 12 Volt gel cell that I salvaged from a UPS.
Rather than use resistors or a dc-dc converter, I wired the LEDs in series. I made strings of 5 LEDs and wired the strings in parallel. (think christmas lights) Peak voltage on my circuit can be > 14.8v
Hints:
The light was extremely white/blue so I made some yellow strings and mixed them in. Cheaper that way too.
I used a cheap wirewound potentiometer as a dimmer because it was too bright for night reading.
I made the electrical connections into a self-supporting frame for the LEDs rather than using a backing material. That means the clear LEDs and fine wires disappear into the background. When it is off it is nearly invisible.
The LEDs I used (Hewlett packard, purchased from Newark Electronics) are extremely focused and directional. It took some careful aiming of the individual elements to get a good spread. You might consider a diffusor.
Good luck, and I will be happy to answer questions if you have any.
Next time I make some, I am going to make seperate red, green and blue circuits so I can tune the color balance.
-j
That guy is amazing!
I hope NASA can duplicate the molecular structure of his hair to protect the next generation space shuttle during re-entry.
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~ota/
They were supposed to protect us from crap science. Then they were disbanded.
I guess REAL science is just too hard to deal with. It rudely remains the same no matter how much wishful thinking or political pressure is brought to bear.
Mumbo jumbo pseudo-science is much easier to deal with. It is whatever you want it to be. It changes whenever the political expedient demands.
Cool.
I work in Boston, let's do lunch.
Now spam expands to fill your pipe.
boy oh boy, after a hard day of pounding a square peg operating system into round hole hardware, nothing cools me off like a dairy based beverage from the makers of Dr. Pepper.
OK, where's my t-shirt?