Coming up with the clever algorithm to solve a problem is what is fun
You nailed that one as far as I am concerned.
This week's project for me... I have this old DOS based SPICE analyzer I really like. Its short, simple, and generates great plots - on an old EPSON dot matrix printer.
Now, I really want to get rid of that printer. That old spice analyzer is the only thing I have that requires it. What I really want is a bitmap image file that will go into anything. So, its time to dust off the ole Borland Turbo Assembler.
I plan to hook the printer interrupt and divert the printer data to my program just like a printer capture program, but instead of just capturing the data to a file, I will take it byte by byte and convert it to bitmap format. Lots of rotate-thru-carry instructions to rearrange the data intended for the printhead into bitmap format. Its a state machine, so there is a 6-way switch for the incoming byte to be tested for "esc", tested for "L", tested for "2", store hi-byte, store lo-byte, and append into bitmap. This is easily done in assembler with an index to an array of pointers to subroutines.
( easy in C++ too, but I was having trouble trying to insert the data, delivered to the printhead 8 bits at a time, in a vertical format, into the bitmap when the assembler would let me use the "carry" bit to transfer the incoming byte bit by bit into the most significant bit of eight bytes in the bitmap). There is a helluva lot of looped busywork to rearrange all the bits.)
Being all the plots are generated by the same program, all have the same size and use the same control-code sequences so I do not have to reconstruct the entire esc sequence interpreter of the Epson printers.
I haven't had this much fun since reading Jeremy Bentham's "TCP/IP Lean" where he implemented state machines in C++ to make TCP/IP stacks, and I wanted to modify it so I could get bidirectional file transfer through the "FORM=FILE" method.
That's the fun of this. Doing things that are not on the menu.
As far as Basic goes, I actually still use my GWBasic interpreter at times to verify some little math loop. Its like using a hand calculator in a way, its a short sweet way of running a snippet, but I would not want to develop "serious" code on it any more than I would want to design my bitmap generator in DEBUG.
I do enjoy doing things the old way on my old machine, where I understand exactly what and why I am doing anything, and know exactly what every byte in the code does. Its something I do not know in the new machines, and I can easily end up using hundreds of kilobytes of code along with megabytes of required libraries to execute some little algorithm I could code in assembler for 4k bytes or so of code. Its almost like trying to buy a house, signing off on reams of legal documents I do not understand, just to say "I agree to buy this house and I will pay for it in monthly payments of whatever. If I do not pay, you have the right to take the house back".
Well, now that there has been so much concern about recognizing information as a "property", isn't it time the tax law recognizes it as property as well?
Paying property tax gives me the right to tell the homeless guy he can't erect his tent on my land. Our government is giving out the right to tell others what they can and cannot do. Do they pay anything for the right?
This whole thing just seems to be a "barrier to entry" to keep competition at bay. Instead of working, our people either turn to the welfare rolls or accept employment at whatever terms from those who have agreements with Government to allow production.
This will go on as long as the rest of the world honors a United States Dollar. We don't have to earn 'em. We just print them.
But really, to me, a lot of this stuff seems about as asinine as McDonalds suing Burger King because the process of putting a hamburger patty in a bun is a intellectual property right.
We've laid minefields of lawsuits. And we are blowing up the draft animals who pull the plow.
I am sure looking forward to this technology making it into the mainstream use.
I see the day coming when I can download a drawing for a part that broke in some gizmo I have, and bringing it to a local "kinko's" to make me another.
It would probably be much like downloading a driver for some card I bought.
It would let me keep my toy as long as I wanted it.
By not forcing me to throw the whole shebang away simply because some part ( which is unavailable as a separate part ) broke.
I still get calls to support industrial processes driven by DOS based machines.
I am an old guy, raised with these beasts. I know the innards of these things like the back of my hand.
The harbinger of death seemed to be a dearth of disk drives compatible with old DOS machines. Even my stream of disk drives from the recycler is drying up. But it looks like SanDisk and Syba have pulled me and my customer's arse out of the fire again.
Its hard to throw away an enormous expensive piece of machinery because its controller ( which has been doing exactly what it needed to do for 25 years ) isn't supported anymore.
Somehow, that makes me think of the old watch my dad had. World War II. Radium dial. Phosphorescent. Stayed lit all the time.
A lot of people got sick making those watches. They would rub the brushes against their lips to make a fine point to paint with. The watches were later deemed to be dangerous and were no longer made.
But, could we design a special "solar cell" that would take that radiation and convert it to electricity?
How about miniature "radiation cell" array surrounding a low-level alpha source. Maybe it could provide a couple of uA, for hundreds of years. Enough to keep a super-cap charged.
Its your suggestion, AC. I think its a good one. It just needs a bit of engineering to bring it to reality.
The 8X on the package art seems a bit optimistic to me, but I personally have some of their first batteries ( gold with a red top ) still in service. I get the idea I do not get anywhere near 8X the Watt-Hr rating of a similiarly sized alkaline, but I get a helluva lot more shelf life from the lithiums.
None of them have leaked.
These are great for remotes, your earthquake kit, and the flashlight you keep in your car that has never worked when you needed it.
Being I work a lot with electronic instruments, all of it gets these cells. Not only will the differential probe set still work after a year in the drawer, there won't be a mess inside. In the event of an emergency, I know which instruments have cells I can raid for the flashlights and radios if the need arises.
Its awful expensive to waste these in toys and high-use items though. Best use the dollar-store alkalines for those.
It puzzles me as to why anyone messes with the old carbon-zinc chemistry anymore, but judging by the battery rack, its still popular.
About ten years ago, I bought a Memorex wireless keyboard at Pic-n-save aka "Big Lots".
I think I paid about $10.
Much to my amazement, its still running on a pair of "Everready lithium" batteries I put in when I first got it.
I put those batteries in everything that I have a tendency to ignore maintenance on, like remotes. I have never seen one of those lithium cells leak yet.
Its been one of those things with me that alkaline cells, regardless of who made them, leak. Even if they aren't dead yet.
I rarely use the keyboard, but when I do, it works. It only transmits ten feet or so, but its enough. It feeds an old P166 I have loaded with DOS and WIN95 to run my old DOS stuff.
What impressed me so was that the keyboard had no on-off switch. For ten years, the keyboard has been sitting there waiting for me to press a key.
My hat's off to the engineer who designed the thing.
I would not mind paying more for this keyboard's electronics in a sturdier mechanical design, but for ten bucks, I thought I got a really nice little gadget.
I noticed you posted as AC. I do not like to like to say what I need to say in cases like this, as I do not like hurt feelings.
You are average. You are not a computer "nerd" and are uninformed on the workings of errant programmers.
Programmers with malicious intent prey on people like you.
You could have googled "drive-by download" in less time than it took to post, and got lots of answers.
You didn't.
You wanted someone else to do it for you.
Well, that makes sense in a way.
In the business world, its called "delegation", and people who are good at it make a lot more money than those who just do what they are told.
In the shyster world, they are willing to tell you anything you want to hear in order to get you to admit their shyster code into your machine. Big deal, you might say.
Remember, even the lettering on the buttons is set by the programmer, Once you understand the power of JavaScript, you realize NOTHING your screen tells you can actually be trusted.
Really, no big deal? Its just a computer? How about handing out your checkbook, legal papers, deeds to your house, along with your personal seal of authenticity - to strangers?
Anything YOU can do on your computer, a stranger can do too, in your name, and probably a whole lot more that you didn't know you could do.
Once you have admitted their "agent" into your machine, its as if you have admitted an invisible "housekeeper" into your home, which can rifle through all your personal effects retrieving and sending to its author anything on its agenda.
Many people have not learned yet to take their privacy seriously.
They are led to believe "I am not a criminal - I do not have nothing to hide. If you have something to hide, its only because I have done something wrong which I am trying to keep from you!".
This whole story is about privacy - or what happens when it is breached - in this case by a computer trojan.
This is why we have so many stories and discussion here on Slashdot about how precious our privacy is,
Even "respectable businesses" that spill private information often shy away from cleaning up the mess made in your life by shysters taking advantage of the situation at your expense.
I cringe every time I hear someone accusing me of having something to hide because I must have done something wrong. Although I am not supposed to pray for someone else's woes, I often find myself uttering a silent prayer that their pristine crystal world will be shattered by someone taking their good name for a roll in the pig sty.
If "privacy" is so wrong, then why is our government so adamant on "security clearances".?
I had to whine ( beg, plead, ass-kiss, whatever ). I do not have the authority to fire anyone.
It was obvious to me management had no idea of what enthalpy was, nor did they care,
If they can't spend it, its all "bloatware" to them.
As long as some government agency would sign contracts with them, their work was done.
Good thing management doesn't manage their dentist. The only thing in the dental office that would work would be the billing and accounts receivable system.
I figured the CEO and Board of Directors considered hands-on engineering to be one of the least important functions of the company.
Somehow, management got the idea I didn't know how to run my computer, which I had built from scratch. They wanted to delegate all computer stuff to the company IT department.
So, IT brought me a whole new machine. Configured to their specs. The same as every other machine.
And with special little screws.
That damn thing was useless to me. It was like trying to fix a car with a typewriter.
I had my old machine loaded with all sorts of tools I had custom crafted for my needs. DSP stuff. Digitizers and digitizing software. Unusual displays. Dual disk drives and RAM drives, along with drivers of my own design. Assemblers. C++ compilers. Schematic capture and PCB layout software. SPICE circuit simulators. Mathcad. Thermodynamics software. Disassemblers and debugging tools just in case something didn't work like it oughta.
IT did not want to support that.
I could not run them on the "company machine" I was "authorized" to use.
My new machine was optimized for writing reports for management, loaded with all sorts of office productivity software.
Boy was I pissed. I whined like hell.
And got laid off. Poor "people skills". Bad performance.
Last thing I want to do is go back and work in an environment like that. I'd rather be on welfare.
I am way too ornery and set in my ways to be a decent corporate engineer. When they have that much money, they can hire someone who will tell them what they want to hear,
However, this will make for much frustration from people trying to have a significant conversation and inadvertently step on banned words.
Read the list . (Same as above, I just copied it here to give you another whack at it.)
Way too many common words used in meaningful conversations are on that list.
I believe that 98% of the phrases on that list are indeed used for nothing else other than naughty texting. But what's to say that other "naughty words" will quickly be coined and substituted for the censored ones?
We cannot enforce morality through technology and censorship like this. It will just frustrate everyone.
Yes. I am convinced this is a bomb target for calibration of "smart bombs".
Basically, you would feed images into your bomb, showing it the path it is to follow and exactly where it is to end up.
In the event of a war, you really cannot expect your enemy to continue to broadcast GPS and homing information for you.
I would suspect all "space-based" assistance would be quickly rendered useless by a few tons of pea-gravel launched into an elliptical polar orbit.
I could see where smart bomb guidance systems could be a by-product of the 3D video gaming industry. Since they have the foundries and production factories in China, this may pose quite a problem for countries who have exported and laid off their technical talent.
The saving grace of a tank full of flammable, explosive fuel is that it MUST join with the low-density oxygen available in the air in order to detonate. This places a fundamental physical limit on how fast the reaction can take place.
Note gasoline fires pose a big problem if the gasoline vapor and air can mix, then be ignited in a closed container.
By observation, note most car fires go on for hours, limited by how fast gasoline escapes from the tank and runs down the street, ablaze.
Production of non-reactive "products of combustion" accumulate around the reaction, slowing down ingress of fresh oxygen needed to sustain the reaction, placing physical limits on how fast the reaction can be sustained.
Not at all like a gas tank filled with gunpowder.
The explosion is limited to the amount of reactants that are mixed in the proper ratio ( as the chemists would say "stoichiometric ratio" ).. Reactants not mixed in the proper ration have leftovers which fail to react until they also "find their partner".
In gunpowder, the reactants are already mixed in the right proportions, physically right next to each other, just waiting to be triggered into reaction.
Physics dictates just how fast, given mixing energies and the quite low density of air, how fast this can happen.
A battery, though, is a bomb. Both of the reactants are within millimeters of each other, separated by only thin membranes, designed for collection of electron flows. A significant mechanical disruption will place the reactants in physical contact with each other in just the right proportion, much as gunpowder. The whole cache of chemical energy stored can be released in milliseconds.
Its a real tribute to battery manufacturers that laptop computer explosions are not commonplace. The things have about the same energy as a hand grenade or stick of dynamite. A cellphone battery has about the same energy as an M-80 firecracker.
Incidentally, its about the same as the energy in a hot-water foot-warmer bag.
Think of it this way: if you discharged your laptop battery into a resistor in a foot-warmer water bag full of cool water, how hot would it become as you drained your battery? Well you get an idea of how much your laptop warms your lap. Think about burning that stick of dynamite by powdering it and burning it slowly. Same thing.
Think of the energy stored in a mousetrap. So little energy that it would be quite hard to measure the heating it could do to the water bag should the energy stored in its spring be released as heat. Yet its quite destructive to the mouse.
What makes it so destructive is the RATE of energy release. The dynamite, and battery, ( and mousetrap) release their stored energy in an instant.
This is just the physics of what we are dealing with.
That is what makes an awareness of the physics governing the operation of our stuff just that much more important as the sophistication of our devices increase.
Why would you want to run stop signs? Why would you want to risk illegal music downloads? Why would you want to risk designing something around thoughts that may not be your own.
Remember, your college education? If you stole from ONE, its called "plagiarism". Steal from many? They call that "research". Don't steal? That's called "re-inventing the wheel". You cannot win.
Like walking through minefields? I have. Its a big risk.
You can do a lot of work, only to have it all rendered useless at a stroke of a pen.
Its safest not to risk doing anything these days. Its like trying to make moonshine without Al Capone's approval.
Our Government is only too happy to put you on welfare if you call one of those TV lawyers who knows how to speak their language. They will even pay for the lawyer.
Only in the USA.
I saw this tagline which seems so appropriate...
"By failing to give me your money, you are depriving me of income, and that makes you a THIEF!"
Somehow, when I read of all this patent fury, I think of the kids who got to the playground first and "put dibs" on all the playground toys. They could extort other kid's lunch money to play. The kids who got there first liked this arrangement and bribed the teacher to let them do this, and the teacher would enforce their "rights".
Problem is some of the other kids started building more stuff that wasn't under control of the kids who had the "rights" to the existing stuff. But how to you claim rights to keep other kids from doing it?
Simple! Laws already exist for Property. Call it Property!
Now, we have property tax, but we want to make sure that this new property can be claimed, yet we shouldn't be taxed on it because... uh... why?
With today's sore need of government revenues, why isn't this taxed? I own a house. I pay over 2% of the market value of my house every year for tax.
Wouldn't this stop the patent trolls dead in their tracks if each patent was taxed on the value its owner assigns to it? In the event of an IP "violation", a property owner can sue up to the value he placed on his IP, at which case,upon paying the IP holder his valuation, the sue-ee ends up holding the so-called property and he is free to value it at whatever he thinks its worth.
We love to privatize the gains and socialize the losses.
Stuff like this will get the people benefiting from our method of protecting monopolies to help pay for the people deprived from building things. Think of it as one of the costs of living in a society where armed police will enforce highly profitable monopolies and keep competition at bay. The American Way. Just as pioneered by Al Capone.
The American Way will work as long as we control the world's reserve currency, and can depend on the fruit of our printing press to exchange for our needs.
I guess tests like this separate companies who are in business to make money from companies who are in business to fulfill a personal need of "being the boss".
If you needed the services of a surgeon, would you insist he use tools he was not familiar with?
Of course, that was a trick question... of whether the surgeon was operating on YOU or your Mother-In-Law...;-}
Slashdot Mirror
You nailed that one as far as I am concerned.
This week's project for me... I have this old DOS based SPICE analyzer I really like. Its short, simple, and generates great plots - on an old EPSON dot matrix printer.
Now, I really want to get rid of that printer. That old spice analyzer is the only thing I have that requires it. What I really want is a bitmap image file that will go into anything. So, its time to dust off the ole Borland Turbo Assembler.
I plan to hook the printer interrupt and divert the printer data to my program just like a printer capture program, but instead of just capturing the data to a file, I will take it byte by byte and convert it to bitmap format. Lots of rotate-thru-carry instructions to rearrange the data intended for the printhead into bitmap format. Its a state machine, so there is a 6-way switch for the incoming byte to be tested for "esc", tested for "L", tested for "2", store hi-byte, store lo-byte, and append into bitmap. This is easily done in assembler with an index to an array of pointers to subroutines.
( easy in C++ too, but I was having trouble trying to insert the data, delivered to the printhead 8 bits at a time, in a vertical format, into the bitmap when the assembler would let me use the "carry" bit to transfer the incoming byte bit by bit into the most significant bit of eight bytes in the bitmap). There is a helluva lot of looped busywork to rearrange all the bits.)
Being all the plots are generated by the same program, all have the same size and use the same control-code sequences so I do not have to reconstruct the entire esc sequence interpreter of the Epson printers.
I haven't had this much fun since reading Jeremy Bentham's "TCP/IP Lean" where he implemented state machines in C++ to make TCP/IP stacks, and I wanted to modify it so I could get bidirectional file transfer through the "FORM=FILE" method.
That's the fun of this. Doing things that are not on the menu.
As far as Basic goes, I actually still use my GWBasic interpreter at times to verify some little math loop. Its like using a hand calculator in a way, its a short sweet way of running a snippet, but I would not want to develop "serious" code on it any more than I would want to design my bitmap generator in DEBUG.
I do enjoy doing things the old way on my old machine, where I understand exactly what and why I am doing anything, and know exactly what every byte in the code does. Its something I do not know in the new machines, and I can easily end up using hundreds of kilobytes of code along with megabytes of required libraries to execute some little algorithm I could code in assembler for 4k bytes or so of code. Its almost like trying to buy a house, signing off on reams of legal documents I do not understand, just to say "I agree to buy this house and I will pay for it in monthly payments of whatever. If I do not pay, you have the right to take the house back".
Well, now that there has been so much concern about recognizing information as a "property", isn't it time the tax law recognizes it as property as well?
Paying property tax gives me the right to tell the homeless guy he can't erect his tent on my land. Our government is giving out the right to tell others what they can and cannot do. Do they pay anything for the right?
This whole thing just seems to be a "barrier to entry" to keep competition at bay. Instead of working, our people either turn to the welfare rolls or accept employment at whatever terms from those who have agreements with Government to allow production.
This will go on as long as the rest of the world honors a United States Dollar. We don't have to earn 'em. We just print them.
But really, to me, a lot of this stuff seems about as asinine as McDonalds suing Burger King because the process of putting a hamburger patty in a bun is a intellectual property right.
We've laid minefields of lawsuits. And we are blowing up the draft animals who pull the plow.
I am sure looking forward to this technology making it into the mainstream use.
I see the day coming when I can download a drawing for a part that broke in some gizmo I have, and bringing it to a local "kinko's" to make me another.
It would probably be much like downloading a driver for some card I bought.
It would let me keep my toy as long as I wanted it.
By not forcing me to throw the whole shebang away simply because some part ( which is unavailable as a separate part ) broke.
I still get calls to support industrial processes driven by DOS based machines.
I am an old guy, raised with these beasts. I know the innards of these things like the back of my hand.
The harbinger of death seemed to be a dearth of disk drives compatible with old DOS machines. Even my stream of disk drives from the recycler is drying up. But it looks like SanDisk and Syba have pulled me and my customer's arse out of the fire again.
Its hard to throw away an enormous expensive piece of machinery because its controller ( which has been doing exactly what it needed to do for 25 years ) isn't supported anymore.
I think you are right.
The more I thought about my post, I came to the conclusion that NO-ONE would probably like Watson's reply.
I wonder how Watson would handle this situation.
But I think the powers-that-be have better sense than to ask Watson this question.
They would not like the answer.
Somehow, that makes me think of the old watch my dad had. World War II. Radium dial. Phosphorescent. Stayed lit all the time.
A lot of people got sick making those watches. They would rub the brushes against their lips to make a fine point to paint with. The watches were later deemed to be dangerous and were no longer made.
But, could we design a special "solar cell" that would take that radiation and convert it to electricity?
How about miniature "radiation cell" array surrounding a low-level alpha source. Maybe it could provide a couple of uA, for hundreds of years. Enough to keep a super-cap charged.
Its your suggestion, AC. I think its a good one. It just needs a bit of engineering to bring it to reality.
Next time you are in your local Mega-lo-mart check out the battery rack for the Everready Ultimate Lithium.
http://www.walmart.com/search/search-ng.do?search_constraint=0&ic=48_0&Find.x=0&Find.y=0&Find=Find&_ta=1&search_query=energizer%20lithium%20batteries&_tt=energizer%20lithium
The 8X on the package art seems a bit optimistic to me, but I personally have some of their first batteries ( gold with a red top ) still in service. I get the idea I do not get anywhere near 8X the Watt-Hr rating of a similiarly sized alkaline, but I get a helluva lot more shelf life from the lithiums.
None of them have leaked.
These are great for remotes, your earthquake kit, and the flashlight you keep in your car that has never worked when you needed it.
Being I work a lot with electronic instruments, all of it gets these cells. Not only will the differential probe set still work after a year in the drawer, there won't be a mess inside. In the event of an emergency, I know which instruments have cells I can raid for the flashlights and radios if the need arises.
Its awful expensive to waste these in toys and high-use items though. Best use the dollar-store alkalines for those.
It puzzles me as to why anyone messes with the old carbon-zinc chemistry anymore, but judging by the battery rack, its still popular.
About ten years ago, I bought a Memorex wireless keyboard at Pic-n-save aka "Big Lots".
I think I paid about $10.
Much to my amazement, its still running on a pair of "Everready lithium" batteries I put in when I first got it.
I put those batteries in everything that I have a tendency to ignore maintenance on, like remotes. I have never seen one of those lithium cells leak yet.
Its been one of those things with me that alkaline cells, regardless of who made them, leak. Even if they aren't dead yet.
I rarely use the keyboard, but when I do, it works. It only transmits ten feet or so, but its enough. It feeds an old P166 I have loaded with DOS and WIN95 to run my old DOS stuff.
What impressed me so was that the keyboard had no on-off switch. For ten years, the keyboard has been sitting there waiting for me to press a key.
My hat's off to the engineer who designed the thing.
I would not mind paying more for this keyboard's electronics in a sturdier mechanical design, but for ten bucks, I thought I got a really nice little gadget.
I noticed you posted as AC. I do not like to like to say what I need to say in cases like this, as I do not like hurt feelings.
You are average. You are not a computer "nerd" and are uninformed on the workings of errant programmers.
Programmers with malicious intent prey on people like you.
You could have googled "drive-by download" in less time than it took to post, and got lots of answers.
You didn't.
You wanted someone else to do it for you.
Well, that makes sense in a way.
In the business world, its called "delegation", and people who are good at it make a lot more money than those who just do what they are told.
In the shyster world, they are willing to tell you anything you want to hear in order to get you to admit their shyster code into your machine. Big deal, you might say.
Remember, even the lettering on the buttons is set by the programmer, Once you understand the power of JavaScript, you realize NOTHING your screen tells you can actually be trusted.
Really, no big deal? Its just a computer? How about handing out your checkbook, legal papers, deeds to your house, along with your personal seal of authenticity - to strangers?
Anything YOU can do on your computer, a stranger can do too, in your name, and probably a whole lot more that you didn't know you could do.
Once you have admitted their "agent" into your machine, its as if you have admitted an invisible "housekeeper" into your home, which can rifle through all your personal effects retrieving and sending to its author anything on its agenda.
Many people have not learned yet to take their privacy seriously.
They are led to believe "I am not a criminal - I do not have nothing to hide. If you have something to hide, its only because I have done something wrong which I am trying to keep from you!".
This whole story is about privacy - or what happens when it is breached - in this case by a computer trojan.
This is why we have so many stories and discussion here on Slashdot about how precious our privacy is,
Even "respectable businesses" that spill private information often shy away from cleaning up the mess made in your life by shysters taking advantage of the situation at your expense.
I cringe every time I hear someone accusing me of having something to hide because I must have done something wrong. Although I am not supposed to pray for someone else's woes, I often find myself uttering a silent prayer that their pristine crystal world will be shattered by someone taking their good name for a roll in the pig sty.
If "privacy" is so wrong, then why is our government so adamant on "security clearances".?
The one I had played "Bolero". ( Ravel ).. on and on and on until someone terminated the process.
But looking back on it, running that program was about as much of a waste of resources as a lot of that stuff Congress funds today.
Gotta admit the parent post caught my attention, as I misread it as "LOO on fire", and I just had to see that!
Yes, the ones that are used for air condititioning are called "badgirs" (windcatchers).
http://www.kavehfarrokh.com/iranica/learning-knowledge-medicine/professor-s-roaf-badgir-irans-ancient-air-conditioning-system/
I posted the same link above. I had not read all the replies yet. Sorry.
I am an admirer of this technology, hence my chomping at the bit...
They might wanna borrow some technology from the Iranians, known as a "badgir" (windcatcher).
http://www.kavehfarrokh.com/iranica/learning-knowledge-medicine/professor-s-roaf-badgir-irans-ancient-air-conditioning-system/
I had to whine ( beg, plead, ass-kiss, whatever ). I do not have the authority to fire anyone.
It was obvious to me management had no idea of what enthalpy was, nor did they care,
If they can't spend it, its all "bloatware" to them.
As long as some government agency would sign contracts with them, their work was done.
Good thing management doesn't manage their dentist. The only thing in the dental office that would work would be the billing and accounts receivable system.
I figured the CEO and Board of Directors considered hands-on engineering to be one of the least important functions of the company.
Reminds me of my "aerospace days".
Somehow, management got the idea I didn't know how to run my computer, which I had built from scratch. They wanted to delegate all computer stuff to the company IT department.
So, IT brought me a whole new machine. Configured to their specs. The same as every other machine.
And with special little screws.
That damn thing was useless to me. It was like trying to fix a car with a typewriter.
I had my old machine loaded with all sorts of tools I had custom crafted for my needs. DSP stuff. Digitizers and digitizing software. Unusual displays. Dual disk drives and RAM drives, along with drivers of my own design. Assemblers. C++ compilers. Schematic capture and PCB layout software. SPICE circuit simulators. Mathcad. Thermodynamics software. Disassemblers and debugging tools just in case something didn't work like it oughta.
IT did not want to support that.
I could not run them on the "company machine" I was "authorized" to use.
My new machine was optimized for writing reports for management, loaded with all sorts of office productivity software.
Boy was I pissed. I whined like hell.
And got laid off. Poor "people skills". Bad performance.
Last thing I want to do is go back and work in an environment like that. I'd rather be on welfare.
I am way too ornery and set in my ways to be a decent corporate engineer. When they have that much money, they can hire someone who will tell them what they want to hear,
My parent clearly shows why this is a loser.
People will just code around the blocked words.
However, this will make for much frustration from people trying to have a significant conversation and inadvertently step on banned words.
Read the list . (Same as above, I just copied it here to give you another whack at it.)
Way too many common words used in meaningful conversations are on that list.
I believe that 98% of the phrases on that list are indeed used for nothing else other than naughty texting. But what's to say that other "naughty words" will quickly be coined and substituted for the censored ones?
We cannot enforce morality through technology and censorship like this. It will just frustrate everyone.
Yes. I am convinced this is a bomb target for calibration of "smart bombs".
Basically, you would feed images into your bomb, showing it the path it is to follow and exactly where it is to end up.
In the event of a war, you really cannot expect your enemy to continue to broadcast GPS and homing information for you.
I would suspect all "space-based" assistance would be quickly rendered useless by a few tons of pea-gravel launched into an elliptical polar orbit.
I could see where smart bomb guidance systems could be a by-product of the 3D video gaming industry. Since they have the foundries and production factories in China, this may pose quite a problem for countries who have exported and laid off their technical talent.
May I suggest a laptop with a USB microscope?
http://www.saelig.com/product/VI021.htm
You are very very close.
The saving grace of a tank full of flammable, explosive fuel is that it MUST join with the low-density oxygen available in the air in order to detonate. This places a fundamental physical limit on how fast the reaction can take place.
Note gasoline fires pose a big problem if the gasoline vapor and air can mix, then be ignited in a closed container.
By observation, note most car fires go on for hours, limited by how fast gasoline escapes from the tank and runs down the street, ablaze.
Production of non-reactive "products of combustion" accumulate around the reaction, slowing down ingress of fresh oxygen needed to sustain the reaction, placing physical limits on how fast the reaction can be sustained.
Not at all like a gas tank filled with gunpowder.
The explosion is limited to the amount of reactants that are mixed in the proper ratio ( as the chemists would say "stoichiometric ratio" ).. Reactants not mixed in the proper ration have leftovers which fail to react until they also "find their partner".
In gunpowder, the reactants are already mixed in the right proportions, physically right next to each other, just waiting to be triggered into reaction.
Physics dictates just how fast, given mixing energies and the quite low density of air, how fast this can happen.
A battery, though, is a bomb. Both of the reactants are within millimeters of each other, separated by only thin membranes, designed for collection of electron flows. A significant mechanical disruption will place the reactants in physical contact with each other in just the right proportion, much as gunpowder. The whole cache of chemical energy stored can be released in milliseconds.
Its a real tribute to battery manufacturers that laptop computer explosions are not commonplace. The things have about the same energy as a hand grenade or stick of dynamite. A cellphone battery has about the same energy as an M-80 firecracker.
Incidentally, its about the same as the energy in a hot-water foot-warmer bag.
Think of it this way: if you discharged your laptop battery into a resistor in a foot-warmer water bag full of cool water, how hot would it become as you drained your battery? Well you get an idea of how much your laptop warms your lap. Think about burning that stick of dynamite by powdering it and burning it slowly. Same thing.
Think of the energy stored in a mousetrap. So little energy that it would be quite hard to measure the heating it could do to the water bag should the energy stored in its spring be released as heat. Yet its quite destructive to the mouse.
What makes it so destructive is the RATE of energy release. The dynamite, and battery, ( and mousetrap) release their stored energy in an instant.
This is just the physics of what we are dealing with.
That is what makes an awareness of the physics governing the operation of our stuff just that much more important as the sophistication of our devices increase.
Why Do So Many College Science Majors Drop Out?
Why would you want to run stop signs? Why would you want to risk illegal music downloads? Why would you want to risk designing something around thoughts that may not be your own.
Remember, your college education? If you stole from ONE, its called "plagiarism". Steal from many? They call that "research". Don't steal? That's called "re-inventing the wheel". You cannot win.
Like walking through minefields? I have. Its a big risk.
You can do a lot of work, only to have it all rendered useless at a stroke of a pen.
Its safest not to risk doing anything these days. Its like trying to make moonshine without Al Capone's approval.
Our Government is only too happy to put you on welfare if you call one of those TV lawyers who knows how to speak their language. They will even pay for the lawyer.
Only in the USA.
I saw this tagline which seems so appropriate...
"By failing to give me your money, you are depriving me of income, and that makes you a THIEF!"
< sarconal >
... uh... why?
/sarconal >
Somehow, when I read of all this patent fury, I think of the kids who got to the playground first and "put dibs" on all the playground toys. They could extort other kid's lunch money to play. The kids who got there first liked this arrangement and bribed the teacher to let them do this, and the teacher would enforce their "rights".
Problem is some of the other kids started building more stuff that wasn't under control of the kids who had the "rights" to the existing stuff. But how to you claim rights to keep other kids from doing it?
Simple! Laws already exist for Property. Call it Property!
Now, we have property tax, but we want to make sure that this new property can be claimed, yet we shouldn't be taxed on it because
With today's sore need of government revenues, why isn't this taxed? I own a house. I pay over 2% of the market value of my house every year for tax.
Wouldn't this stop the patent trolls dead in their tracks if each patent was taxed on the value its owner assigns to it? In the event of an IP "violation", a property owner can sue up to the value he placed on his IP, at which case,upon paying the IP holder his valuation, the sue-ee ends up holding the so-called property and he is free to value it at whatever he thinks its worth.
We love to privatize the gains and socialize the losses.
Stuff like this will get the people benefiting from our method of protecting monopolies to help pay for the people deprived from building things. Think of it as one of the costs of living in a society where armed police will enforce highly profitable monopolies and keep competition at bay. The American Way. Just as pioneered by Al Capone.
The American Way will work as long as we control the world's reserve currency, and can depend on the fruit of our printing press to exchange for our needs.
<
I guess tests like this separate companies who are in business to make money from companies who are in business to fulfill a personal need of "being the boss".
;-}
If you needed the services of a surgeon, would you insist he use tools he was not familiar with?
Of course, that was a trick question... of whether the surgeon was operating on YOU or your Mother-In-Law...
A urine soaked diaper soon emits large quantities of ammonia when bacteria decompose the urea.
Thanks for running the thermodynamics on this. I was just about ready to break out the steam tables and do the same.
To me, what you just typed is by far the simplest and most reliable indicator of how much thermal energy was injected into the process.
Bottom Line: Five hours at 1MW(thermal) should have evaporated 6000 liters of water.
Thanks for the link. If I had mod points, I would have appreciated your contribution thusly.